


Lab Life

by mosylu



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst, Anthology, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Originally Posted on Tumblr, past Caitlin/Ronnie
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-31
Updated: 2018-03-09
Packaged: 2018-03-09 18:50:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 34
Words: 19,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3260606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mosylu/pseuds/mosylu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A gathering place for the various Killervibe bits and pieces that I've posted on Tumblr.</p><p>Newest story - "A Cunning Plan" for the prompt "what do you mean by leaving?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Angels Fear to Tread

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cisco is sometimes a fool. He does a lot of rushing in, anyway. Futurefic, whenever we get Killer Frost.

The bitter wind tossed Cisco’s hair and plastered his Blue Sun t-shirt to his chest. But he tucked his hands into his pockets and ambled toward the enraged, glittering ice goddess. “So this is new.”

“Stay away,” she said, her voice like the howl of an Arctic wind.

“What? You think this is cold?” He scoffed audibly, even while shivers racked his compact body and frost formed in his eyebrows, aging him prematurely. “Cait, don’t let the awesome tan fool you. I grew up in Detroit. I got my master’s at Michigan Tech and my doctorate at Northwestern. _I rode my bike to school._ You gotta do better than this to scare me off.”

“I’m warning you,” that horrible, inhuman voice said.

“Eh, since when do I listen to warnings?” He was right up to her now, toe-to-toe, nose-to-reddening nose.

She raised her hands, ready to blast him the way she had done to Ronnie.

“So,” he said thoughtfully. “I’m thinking Snow Queen.”

She hesitated. Icicles glittered like knives on the tips of her fingers. “What?”

Was that a little bit of humanity returning to her voice? Something like a voice instead of a shriek of northern wind?

“Snow Queen. It’s got a ring.”

“Snow … Queen?”

“Yup. You like?”

“No,” she said, and now it was definitely more Caitlin than the creature of cold and ice. “No, it’s crazy. It’s your worst ever. My _actual name_ is Snow. It’s the kind of secret identity a nine-year-old would come up with.”

“You may have a point. It’s a work in progress. I’ll think about it.” His hair and brows had darkened again as the frost melted, as the air warmed, as the wind died.

Caitlin’s hands hung at her sides, gently dripping with melted ice. She looked down at herself, then up at him.

His mouth crooked up at the corner. “Hey.”

“Hey,” she said, and her face crumpled.

He pulled her into his arms, murmuring. “I know, I know. It sucks. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, Cait.”

Her tears burned hot against his neck.


	2. Date Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bursting into places at Flash speeds is really a bad habit, and it’s going to rebound on him someday. In which Caitlin is frustrated, Cisco is annoyed, and Barry is a maiden aunt. Futurefic with an established relationship.

”Dude!” Cisco howled. “Do you mind?”

"Kinda, yeah!" Barry still had his hand clamped over his eyes.

Cisco gave an annoyed sigh. “It’s safe. You won’t see anything.”

Barry risked it. Cisco sat on the end of the couch, next to a blanket-covered lump with a little bit of reddish-blonde hair escaping out the top and a couple of bare feet out the bottom.

Cisco shook his head at him. “Do I have to put a sock on the doorknob or something? Why the hell would you come busting in here after midnight?”

"Okay, first of all, I would never bust into your actual apartment. This is the lab, and I left something here today. Second, oh my god, what were you doing in the lab? Isn’t it date night for you guys?"

The blanket on the couch underwent some seismic activity. A slender hand slipped out, fingers questing around for something. Cisco leaned over and grabbed something silky and lacy off the floor and pressed it into her fingers. Barry made a wibbling sound.

Cisco cleared his throat. “Um. We stopped in to run some tests.”

"On what?"

He rubbed the back of his neck, eyes wandering off to some corner of the ceiling. “Focus. Control. Variation. Intensity.”

"What?"

The blanket was thrown back, revealing Caitlin’s sweaty, exasperated face. “Barry. Sound waves. Vibrations. If I have to spell it out any more, then I really feel sorry for Iris.”

Barry frowned. Then his eyes widened, and he made the wibbling sound again. Caitlin groaned.

"On the lab couch?” he wailed.

She tossed the blanket aside. Her dress was more or less on and pulled down. “Relax, he didn’t finish me off. No thanks to you.”

"I sit on that couch!"

Cisco pointed at the terry cloth under his butt. “We always put a towel down, man.”

"Always? What do you mean always?" Barry held up a hand. "Y’know what? Never mind. I don’t want to think about it. Ever again. Oh my god. I have to go."

 _Whoosh_ , and he was gone.

Caitlin flopped back against the couch cushions with a groan. Cisco uttered an equally exasperated one.

They sighed in unison.

Cisco rolled his head against the back so he could look at Caitlin. “So how close were you?”

"Pretty damn."

"You know he’s gonna want to burn this couch tomorrow."

"Yep."

"So. . . ."

She rolled her head to look at him. “Really? That didn’t kill the mood?”

"Mmm, I figure it’s like this." He straddled her, kissed her temple. "It’ll take half an hour to get home." Her lips, which curved under his. "Then we gotta pay Tracy." The hollow of her throat. "Then I’ll have to run her home while you check in on the baby." Between her breasts, tugging aside her dress. "And probably feed him because you know he’ll be hungry."

Her hand settled lightly on the crown of his head. "That’s from you."

He smiled against her stomach. “And we’ve got to be back here in like seven hours for the calculations I set running.” He slid to the floor, propping his elbows on her knees. “This is the best way to go, really.”

She curled her fingers in his hair, laughing softly at the ceiling. She knew without looking that he was grinning, his eyes sparkling. “And you still owe me that apology for thinking about work during date night in the first place.”

“Exactly. So?”

“All right, Vibe.” She scooted her butt forward. “Show me what you’ve got.”


	3. Relationship Status?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of all the evils that Facebook had perpetrated upon her generation, at this moment Caitlin was pretty sure that the relationship status was the worst. Sometime right now-ish, after 1x09 and before 1x14.

Of all the evils that Facebook had perpetrated upon her generation, at this moment Caitlin was pretty sure that the relationship status was the worst.

Her mom called Facebook official the millennial version of going steady. (“Please. Mother. Did you go to school with Gidget? I don’t think _you_ even said ‘going steady.’”)

She still remembered the day she’d changed it from “single” to “in a relationship” and added Ronnie’s name. She’d held her breath, biting her lip, until Ronnie had approved the change, even though they were texting at the time, and she’d just told him she was going to do it, and his response had been, “YES. Right now? YES.”

He’d been the one to change it to “engaged” on the night he’d proposed. She’d been sitting in his lap, giggly and more than slightly drunk and dazzled by the diamond ring he’d had the waiter put on top of her dessert (cheesecake, and she’d almost eaten it because _holy crap_ best cheesecake ever).

For a short, extremely maudlin time after the explosion, she’d marked herself “widowed.” The day she’d changed it back to “single,” on the advice of her therapist, she’d sobbed on the couch for two hours, her laptop waiting patiently on the coffee table.

It had been “single” for a long time.

Why was she looking at it today?

She knew why.

His fingers combing through her hair, the press of his cheek to the top of her head as she wept. His quiet support, when Cisco was so rarely quiet.

Something had shifted between them, that night outside the pipeline. Or maybe just in her. It was like some kind of spotlight had flicked on, bathing Cisco Ramon in its brilliancy.

Maybe not flicked on. Nothing so sudden. Maybe it had been getting steadily brighter and brighter over the past months of working so closely with him, and sharing things with him. Watching their professional lives fall to pieces around them. Watching others bail, knowing without talking about it that they’d never do the same because after everything else, they still believed in Wells. Two of them hanging onto the same rope, and hanging onto each other just as hard.

When Barry Allen had gasped out of his coma and into a strange new world of super-speed and metahumans, Cisco had been there, dashing ahead into the unknown with a sparkle in his eye, looking back at her as if to say, _Cait! C’mon! Let’s go!_ And she’d gone, because he was there to hold onto.

At the same time, he’d just been Cisco, her irreverent, nerdy, quirky co-worker, someone she could easily look past while she thought about the man who wasn’t there.

Now, after he’d pressed a kiss to her forehead, mumbling his sorrow and his sympathy, she couldn’t look away from him.

Of course, _now_. Her timing was awful. Her fiance wasn’t actually dead (even if he did seem to be escaping the bounds of sanity, if not humanity, at speed) and instead of being completely focused on finding him, helping him, she couldn’t stop thinking about somebody else.

What did that make her? Was she a cheater? But she hadn’t done anything with Cisco.

She’d thought about it. A lot. In ways that made her hot and sticky, tangled in her blankets at 2 am. While grief had done a number on her libido, it seemed to be waking up again. And that was Cisco’s fault too. Him and his damn lollipops. Oh, god, those lollipops. And his long-fingered, flexible hands, flickering over keyboards or delicately twisting wires or tucking his hair behind his ears.

The day she’d caught him sewing, stitching up some seam on an extra suit, she’d practically had to excuse herself.

Who could begrudge her a little bit of healthy lust? Certainly not her therapist, who’d reminded her that Ronnie had been gone for nearly a year. (Although Dr. Alvarez had meant it in the gentle, euphemistic sense, and not in the hard, cold reality of Ronnie just _not being there_.)

Moving on, emotionally, physically, was a good thing. It didn’t mean that she hadn’t loved Ronnie. It meant that she was growing into her grief, settling it into place, so the rest of her life could move back into place as well.

(One of the annoying things about Dr. Alvarez was her tendency to use phrases like _growing into your grief_. How freaking woo-woo was that? The other annoying thing was that she actually helped.)

But now Ronnie was back.

Sort of.

(And try telling her therapist that. She had to call Barry their new intern; there was no way she could explain about super-powerful metahumans and her involvement with same.)

Was it really even Ronnie anymore? That wild-eyed man, bursting into flame, telling her _don’t look for me_ -

How stupid. Her Ronnie would have known that such a statement was like waving a red flag in front of a bull. _Don’t look for me?_

Please.

Although if it came to that, she didn’t feel like the woman who’d fallen in love with him. Not anymore.

She stared at the drop-down box, finally selected, “it’s complicated,” and didn’t add a name when it prompted her to.


	4. Sugar Rush

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because jaegermighty has a filthy mind and shares it with us.
> 
> From Tumblr: "cisco ramon would buy you ice cream and then go down on you for an hour and for the rest of the week you can’t watch him pulling his hair back into a ponytail without getting lightheaded. like that’s the kinda sugar rush i’m about."

"Caitlin?"

"Mnah," she said indistinctly.

Barry peered into her face, brows crinkled up with worry. “Are you okay?”

She blinked, shook her head, and said, “I’m fine.”

"Really. You looked like you went into a fugue state."

"Just tired, I guess."

Across the room, surrounded by the guts of the treadmill that was getting its monthly souping-up, Cisco lifted his head, looking inquisitive. She shot him a filthy glare.

He’d gone and pulled his hair back into a messy ponytail at the base of his neck. Ugggggghhhhhhhh.

As if that weren’t bad enough, he’d shoved up his sleeves to the elbow, exposing the arms that always shocked her with their muscle definition, and he was singing bits of some stupid pop song that had been crazy-popular like three years ago. Jerk.

And now he was looking at her with his head tilted to one side like a worried puppy. How did he even live with himself, she wanted to know.

She looked away, primming her lips into a line. She heard, very faintly, his delighted snicker as he figured it out.

Barry still looked puzzled. She smiled at him. “Okay, any questions?”

"Ye-es," Barry said. "I asked them."

"You did?"

"You were all … fugue-y."

"Oh, sorry. Again?"

They went over her notes on the metahuman DNA they’d scraped off the sidewalk, her conclusions, the possibilities for getting the best of this particular villain-of-the-week. Cisco listened as he tinkered, occasionally contributing a comment and even coming up with a name. As if he didn’t know what he was doing to her.

And then to make matters worse, when he closed up the treadmill again, he got to his feet and str-e-e-e-tched out with his grease-smeared hands over his head, so the hem of his shirt rode up and exposed a narrow strip of his belly, bisected with a thin line of dark hair. He pretended not to see her staring as he said brightly, “You know what we need?”

Clearly ready for a break, Barry said, “What?”

"Ice cream!"

"Rgggh!" she growled, and tossed her clipboard on the desk before stalking off. Barry’s puzzled, ”I thought she liked ice cream," and Cisco’s, "I dunno, I guess she wanted to keep working" trailing after her.

Ooo, that little innocent act.

When he knew perfectly well she was thinking about what he’d done to her four nights ago, when they’d gone out for ice cream and wound up on his couch, her legs over his shoulders, him grinning up at her and saying, “Let’s do some science, Dr. Snow” before pulling his hair back into a ponytail and licking up a big slurp of mint chocolate chip.

In spite of her protestations that the combination of genitalia and sugar was an excellent way to get a yeast infection - which had spluttered out when he put his cool, slick tongue in the _exact right place_ \- they hadn’t left the couch for an hour.

To his credit, he’d been the one to suggest the shower, and he’d made sure that she was completely clean before she’d pulled him out of the shower and to his bed. (It hadn’t been a far trip. Cisco’s whole apartment was like a hobbit hole, it was that small.)

Ever since, just seeing him pull his hair back was enough to torpedo her concentration.

Ten minutes later, Barry came and gave her a cup of strawberry peach ice cream from that awesome little place across the city. She smiled her thanks at him and took it. “You’re okay,” she said. “I was annoyed because of something else. Unrelated.”

"Okay," he said, shifting from foot to foot. "Wells has some thoughts about this guy. Wanna hear them?"

"Sure." She went with him back to the lab. Wells was bent over her notes, squinting slightly, and he asked Barry a question about one of the moves that the meta had pulled.

Cisco was tasking the satellites to ping if they caught the warning signs of today’s meta. He’d taken his hair out of the ponytail and rolled his sleeves down, so at least he had some basic human decency even if he’d forgotten to wash off the patch of engine grease just in front of his ear. But when she paused by the work desk, he held up his little cup of ice cream, half-eaten already. “Want a taste?”

Mint. Fucking. Chocolate. Chip.

She leaned down, pretending to look over his shoulder, and muttered, “You’re an asshole and I hate you.”

His wide, wide grin reflected on the screen of his tablet. “Meet me in the break room in fifteen minutes?”

She glanced around and confirmed that Barry and Wells were both studying something in the readouts. She reached up, slipped her hand under the soft edges of his hair, and traced a circle around the bump of his T1 vertebra, right at the base of his neck, with her nail.

He said, “Hlrgh.”

She whispered in his ear, “Make it ten.”


	5. Suffer the Consequences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For a prompt from vanillaorchid95 on Tumblr: "I can’t let you do this" for Killervibe. Futurefic, established relationship

"Cisco, give me my phone."

"No," Cisco said, clutching it to his chest. "I can’t let you do this."

"I’m ordering pizza."

"I know," he said seriously. "You need to think about the consequences of your actions."

"The consequences? All I said was I wanted pineapple."

"Exactly. Cait, you’re eating for two now. You need to be careful."

"Oh," she said. "I get it. I understand. Our daughter might be born with a taste for pineapple on her pizza. How could I live with myself?"

"Right?"

"Gimme that," she said, and managed to grab her phone.

He came up behind her and slid his arms around her waist, resting his chin on her shoulder. “I’m just saying.”

"Lots of people like pineapple on their pizza," she said, dialing the pizza place. "Including me."

"Lots of people are weird. Including you."

"Nice. That’s how you talk to the mother of your child?"

"When the mother of my child is making a terrible mistake."

She elbowed him. He snickered.

"Hi, I want to order a large pizza. I want half Hawaiian and half - " She looked over her shoulder. "What do you want?"

"Mmm." He kissed her shoulder. "Onions, green pepper, olives, jalapeños, and mushrooms."

She stared at him.

"Oh, and do they still have the buffalo chicken?"

"And you have the nerve to give me crap about pineapple."

"Hey, I’m only eating for one."

She said into the phone, “On second thought, change that Hawaiian to a personal size.” She spun in his arms and slapped her phone to his chest. “He’s going to order his own.”


	6. Overdressed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caitlin's outfit is a little unusual today.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, this is a Killervibe story. Very, very quietly. Shhh.

When Barry walked into the break room, Caitlin was chugging from a bottle of ice water like a frat boy at the beer keg.

"Hah!" he said, and she jumped, spilling the water down her front. "I knew you had to be too hot in that coat!"

She hugged it around herself and attempted haughtiness. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Barry Allen.”

They’d all been called in for an emergency meta thing, something so urgent that the usually pulled-together Caitlin had arrived in yoga pants, flip-flops, and a heavy wool coat.

Barry had been too busy taking care of the emergency to pay attention to her outfit earlier. But now, during the inevitable mop-up and debriefing, he couldn’t help noticing that the coat was too warm for the burgeoning spring outside and definitely too warm for the heated inside air. But she’d steadfastly refused to remove it, even while sweat beaded on her upper lip.

"You’re getting heatstroke," he pointed out now. "You’re all red in the face. Caitlin, you are wearing a shirt under that, right?"

"What? Of course I am!"

"Okay, so?"

With a deep sigh and a look around, she shrugged off the coat.

Barry had just figured she was wearing something completely disreputable, like a sweat-stained workout tank, and was prepared to tease her about it. Oooo, Caitlin Fashion Snow owns clothes with holes in them!

But the oversized t-shirt that he blinked at was crisp and clean, apart from the giant splotch of water down the front. “I don’t get it. Why would you want to cover that up? It’s okay.”

She shook her head. “Barry. Look at it. Really look.”

He peered at her. “It’s kinda cute and funny, actually.” It showed a cartoon bat with wings outspread, wearing a utility belt, and a tiny picture of a man on his chest. “It looks like something that …” He trailed off.

"Cisco would wear?" she finished for him.

He goggled. “Is that Cisco’s shirt? How do you have Cisco’s shirt? Caitlin, are you guys - ?”

"No!" She sighed and leaned back against the sink. "I’ve had this for over a year."

He blinked. “Okay, so … _did_ you guys - ?”

She glared at him. He shut up.

"After the explosion, Cisco spent a lot of time at my place. Basically splitting keeping-Caitlin-sane duties with my mom. He spilled coffee on this shirt and my mom told him to put it in the laundry and I’d give it back except I never did."

"Okay," Barry said. "I get that, except I still don’t get why you’re wearing it or why you’re so embarrassed about that. I mean, it’s Cisco. He’d probably tell you, ‘awesome shirt!’ and give you a high five and tell you to keep it."

She stared at the ceiling. “I miss him,” she muttered.

"How? You work with him every day."

"Ever since Ronnie came back - "

And then left again, neither of them said.

" - Cisco’s been. I don’t know. Not there."

"I didn’t notice him treating you different."

"Oh, he’s just the same here, and he’ll text me back if I text him, but it’s not the same anymore. I can’t remember the last time we hung out and I don’t know why. And I miss him. So sometimes I wear this shirt at home and shut up, I know it’s dumb."

"No," he said. "That’s not dumb." Surprising. Definitely thought-provoking. Not dumb. "What is dumb, though, is you overheating. Wait here."

He zipped to the dark, abandoned gift shop by the public entrance, or what had been meant to be the public entrance, back when Star Labs was supposed to be a major scientific attraction with tours for school groups and tourist families to view the particle accelerator. He rooted around in the stacks of dusty boxes until he found what he was looking for, and zipped back.

He held out women’s hoodies in three sizes. “Which one?”

She arched a brow. “You mean you haven’t gone through all those yet?”

Between various metahumans, disasters, and air friction (man, air friction was tough on cotton), Barry had worn a Star Labs sweatshirt or hoodie home so many times that he had an enviable collection going in his closet. “Only the men’s large,” he told her. “There’s plenty of others still.”

She looked at the tags, picked the one she wanted, and handed the other two back. He darted back, replaced them, and returned to the break room before she’d finished zipping it up. “Better?”

"Yeah. I mean it smells dusty." She wrinkled her nose. "But yeah."

"Okay. And now Cisco."

"Barry, please don’t say anything to him."

"Of course I’m not. But you should." He hopped up to sit on the counter next to her. "Look, Caitlin, I know you guys are both champions of pretending that you don’t have feelings. But you have been friends a lot longer than I’ve been around, and it’s important to both of you."

"How do you know it’s still important to him?"

"Because I do," he said.

"What do I say?"

"Uh, I’m not exactly the Friend Whisperer," he said. "But, you know, it’s Cisco. Coffee or ice cream or a drink or fast food or chocolate or - "

"I get it!" she said, laughing a little. "Okay. Fine. I’ll see if he wants to go get … something."

"Today."

"Today?"

"Today." Barry nodded at the little triangle of shirt peeking above the vee of the hood. "Or you’re going to be wearing that a lot more."


	7. Summer in the City

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cisco wants a popsicle, and no matter how stubborn Caitlin's being, she's going to help him out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because it really is hotter than Satan’s jockstrap where I am and I hate waiting for popsicles to freeze.

“Please,” Cisco said, holding out the box of ice pops. He’d had to fight a twelve-year-old for it at Safeway. He would have been ashamed of that, except Central City was hotter than Satan’s jockstrap, and also that little snot had bitten him. So really, shame wasn't an emotion he was feeling at the moment. Good thing, too, because Caitlin was making him beg.

“No,” she said, adjusting an axis on the graph on her screen. She was fine. Of course. She didn't even sweat anymore. She loved this weather.

“Please? I’ll give you one.” He rooted around until he found her favorite flavor and peeled it off from the main sheet, waving it around in front of her face.

She gave him a look like Snoopy imitating a vulture. “Really? We had to lock me in the pipeline for three months until we could figure out something that would supply enough body heat so I could leave the cell without Ronnie, and you’re offering me a _popsicle_?”

“Possibly not the most effective bribe,” he conceded. “But Caitlin, c’mon, I’ll have to wait, like, an hour and a half! Possibly two!”

“So, wait. Our A/C’s doing fine.” For emphasis, she poured herself more tea, steam curling up from the mug.

“I’ll go out and buy you more fancy tea leaves from that fancy place you like.”

Her eyes slid sideways. Her mouth twisted in consideration. “Then I’ll have to wait.”

“I’ll send Barry. It’ll be here in thirty seconds.”

“Then he’ll get a popsicle, not you.”

“Pllllleeeeeeee-I-can-keep-this-up-all-day-eeeeeeeeeeeeease?”

She bared her teeth briefly, knowing he was right. “This was going to be my awesome Fourth of July picnic trick,” she growled. She grabbed the ice pop and held it for a moment. The clear green liquid inside the plastic tube went cloudy and solid, and she shoved it at him.

“I won’t tell anybody,” he promised, already biting off the top. With his mouth occupied, it sounded like “Iwoellayby.”

She rolled her eyes at him and grabbed the box of ice pops out of his hands to freeze the rest of them.


	8. Hot Town

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cisco, Caitlin, and popsicles again. Oh, and simulated fellatio.

“How’s the patient?”

Cisco wiped his hands on a rag, frowning at the innards of the HVAC unit. “Not good.” Star Labs’ A/C had gone out, and of course it was a day where both heat and humidity hovered just under the triple digits. Breathing in was like slow drowning.

He looked up and blinked. “Wow. Casual Wednesday?”

Crouched next to him, Caitlin tugged at the hem of her loose, scoop-necked green tank top. She’d matched it with a pair of blue running shorts, because no matter how casual she got, she still insisted on coordinating. “I had to. I was dying."

“I’m working on it,” he said defensively. He felt grimy and greasy and sweaty, and annoyed with a machine that usually did his bidding. “It’s going to need some parts.”

“I know you are,” she said, with surprising calm. “Here, take a break.” She held out a popsicle. “Grape.”

He cheered up immediately. “Hey, thanks!” He ripped the paper off and stuck it in his mouth. His whole body went _Ahhhhhhhhhhh_ as the ice froze his tongue. He plopped down to sit cross-legged next to the HVAC, on the blanket he'd spread out to save his knees.

“So what kind of parts do you need?” she asked, settling down across from him, unwrapping her own popsicle, and giving it a lick. Watermelon, it looked like, or cotton candy. It was pink, anyway.

“Oh, man, definitely a compressor, and a - “ He paused.

“A what?” she asked, and licked her popsicle again. A long lick, with her whole tongue. From the bottom all the way up to the top.

“A, um, some of the filters are totally … gunked … up …”

She swirled her tongue over the (pink, oh so very pink) tip, then delicately closed her mouth around it.

His own popsicle dripped onto his knee, forgotten. “And a compressor - “

She smiled at him around her popsicle. “You already said that.”

He shook his head. “Um, well, it’s important. The compressor.”

“That’s what I hear.” She ducked her head to catch some of the melting juice from the base of her popsicle before it could run onto her hand. _Slllurrrp_.

“Caitlin?”

“Mhm.”

“What are you doing?”

Her eyes were wicked and her smile was more so. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

“Are you giving that popsicle head?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, a popsicle doesn’t have a glans.” She slid the whole thing into her mouth as far as it would go, and then slowly out again.

He was surprised he didn’t spontaneously combust on the spot. “Caitlin,” he said to his fastidious girlfriend. “I’m covered in grease. And sweat. And - “

“And you’ve been working without a shirt for the past half hour," she interrupted. “And when you reach up, all the muscles in your back flex, and your pants slide down until I can see your Venus dimples, above your sacroiliac joints.”

He felt the grin crawl across his face. “I know how much you love my sacroiliac joints.”

“It’s true.”

He studied his popsicle, now melting at speed. “We’ve got more of these, right?”

“A whole box in the freezer.”

“Okay then.” He held the popsicle out over her shoulder, tilting it so a fat drop of juice fell from the tip onto the swell of her breasts.

She squealed at the cold.

“Oh, hey," he said, leaning in. "Let me get that for you.”


	9. Guest Badge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So if Mercury Labs' security is so good, how did Cisco get in to see Caitlin? Spoilers for 2x01

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's still in a lab, so it counts.

After Caitlin got back from the rally-turned-mayhem, she tried to settle down to her research. She had left several experiments running and some of the data should be ready for analysis.

She couldn’t focus.

Not because of what had happened at the rally. Well. Not because of the most dramatic thing that had happened at the rally. The one everybody was asking her about. She’d said over and over again “No, I didn’t see very much. I ran. Excuse me, my data.”

Which was the sensible thing to do, running. Why did people think she was going to stand around taking notes?

It was also a lie. A little bit of a lie. She had run, but only far enough for safety, and then she’d kicked off her high heels and watched to see if she need to run back in, if they needed her. If Barry got hurt, or Joe, or Cisco.

Cisco.

Cisco, lounging around with Joe, chewing on his toothpick because he thought it made him look tough. She preferred the lollipops. He’d frozen for a moment when that giant meta had landed in front of them. She’d seen it. 

Fear? Surprise? Neither of those fit his expression, somehow.

It was more like the distracted daydreams he’d been falling into, just after the singularity. She would poke his shoulder or say his name, and he would jolt out of them, blinking. 

But that made no sense. That most certainly hadn’t been a moment for daydreams.

She’d been on the verge of yelling his name, but Joe got there first. Cisco had snapped out of it, and went dashing off to bring out some giant gadget that was classic Cisco. 

She’d slumped against a column, weak with relief.

Had he seen her? 

She’d spent a lot of time not looking in his direction, before the mayhem had started. He looked good, she’d registered in the covert glances she stole at him when he was focused on something else. That silly shirt was a good color for him, really. Iris had told her he was working with CCPD now. That would be good; he’d like that. Being part of something. Cisco was a pack animal; he needed to be part of things. 

Did he miss her?

He hadn’t contacted her since she’d left Star Labs. She’d accepted that he was probably furious with her. Cisco could be very hard on people who abandoned his pack. She still remembered some of the names he called the people who’d quit Star Labs right after the explosion.

(But she missed him.)

The last time they’d spoken had been the night she’d told him she’d accepted a job at Mercury Labs. They’d been eating ice cream … well, he’d been eating and she’d been poking at it with her spoon as it melted. He’d been chattering away, something about comic books, until she’d said, “I have to tell you something.”

He’d gone silent, as if he already knew what she was going to say.

Then, when she’d said it, he’d finished his ice cream, quiet as the grave, thrown away the little paper cone, and left without saying goodbye.

Her phone rang. The caller ID showed it was the front desk. “Dr. Snow? There’s someone here for you.”

“Did he give his name?”

“Cisco Ramon.”

She dropped the handset.

He needed something. Of course he needed something. A blood sample. A test run. Something. 

Well. She wouldn’t give it to him. She was out of that life. She was not that person anymore, that person who worked eighteen hour days on the most (fascinating) ridiculous oddities that Central City had to offer. 

She arrived at eight and left at five and her life was simple and sane and (boring) calm.

Star Labs was not simple. Star Labs was barely even sane. Calm was right out.

He would give her puppy eyes and say something like, _It would really help, Caitlin,_ but she would remain strong because … because … 

Well, _because._

She should tell them to send him away, in fact. Leave a message, she would get back to him.

(But she _missed him_.)

The handset squawked, “Dr. Snow? Are you there? Are you all right?”

And very faintly, his voice, saying her name, “Caitlin?”

She picked it up. Her fingers were cold. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, he’s a friend. Please send him up.”


	10. Yes, No (Maybe So)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cisco makes a bet. Caitlin thinks he can't win it, and may be actively sabotaging him. (Or maybe she's just enjoying the possibilities.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt, "breaking the rules" and "tactile," from hotglassofmilk on Tumblr. 
> 
> Like she could possibly give me the prompt “tactile” and not have me come up with something dirty. She knew exactly what she was doing.

“Is it true?”

Cisco glanced up at Caitlin, raising his brows.

She crossed her arms. “You made some silly bet with Barry.”

His face scrunched with mild outrage at the adjective. “Yes.”

“That you could only say the words yes or no.”

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

He gave her a withering look.

“A day?”

“No.”

“Two days?”

“No.” He circled his hand in the air, a silent _keep going._

“A week?”

“Yes.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’ll never make it,” she said. “You like to talk too much.”

“No,” he protested.

“Can you at least text?”

“Yes.” They’d had to settle on that as a compromise. Otherwise it would have just gotten too silly if he needed to impart information. It would have been Lassie trying to tell people about Timmy down the well.

She tapped her foot a few times, looking him up and down. “You really think you can do this.”

“Yes.” At least, he hoped so. He had a hundred bucks riding on it, and he needed that much more for the really sweet arc welder he’d been eyeing online. It was only discounted for another couple of weeks. Ohhhh, honey, come to Papi.

Her mouth curled up. “So, if I were to, say, start taking off my clothes - ” She lifted her hands to the buttons of her crisp white shirt. “- and ask you what you’d like to do to me right now, you couldn’t tell me?”

His eyes widened. “N-no.”

Oh boy. He hadn’t considered this when he’d made that bet. One of the places he was most vocal was in bed, which Caitlin knew perfectly well. Was that why she’d been annoyed?

She flicked a button open. “Even if I told you we were alone?”

“No,” he whimpered.

Another button. “Even if I said I’d locked the door behind me?”

He looked over. Yes, indeed, the door to his workroom was clearly locked. “No,” he said mournfully.

“Even if I said I’d taken off my underwear before I came in here?”

His eyes widened. She wasn’t serious about that, was she?

She paused in unbuttoning her shirt, just where he could catch a glimpse of her satiny blue bra, and reached in her pocket to show him a scrunched-up piece of material that matched it.

“Nnnnooooo,” he moaned.

She tucked it away again and settled her hands high on his chest. “No,” she crooned. “I guess you couldn’t.” She stroked across his chest, over his shoulders, and down his arms to where his hands were braced on the table behind him. The position pressed them together from knees to chest. “Because that would be breaking the rules, wouldn’t it?”

Was she in cahoots with Barry or what? “Y-y-yes,” he gasped as she licked his neck.

“So basically, I can do whatever I want to you and all you can tell me is yes or no.”

“Ye-essss,” he whimpered.

She slid her hand under the hem of his t-shirt and ran her nails lightly up his side, leaving a trail of gooseflesh in their wake. “Are you sure?”

He panted mindlessly, thinking, _A hundred bucks. Bet. Arc welder. Beating Barry._

He was about to say “screw it” to all of that when he looked at her face, her eyes sparkling with devilish glee. She was into this. She was really, really into this.

Well. Now that was just _interesting._

“Yes,” he breathed, pressing his hips into hers so she could feel how much he was into it, too.

Her smile widened.

Turned out he didn’t even need the word “no.” Just “yes,” over and over and over again.


	11. Afterparty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for the Tumblr prompt: "things you said that i wasn’t meant to hear"

Cisco was puttering around his lab, happily disassembling a failed gadget, taking notes on where the scorch marks were darkest, cleaning the fire-foam out of the crevices, when he heard the babble of female voices. He glanced over at the intercom speaker with his eyebrows raised.

Caitlin had left Star Labs four hours ago to attend Iris’s bachelorette party. “Drink responsibly,” he’d told her, smirking. “And don’t go to any karaoke bars without me.”

She’d stuck her tongue out at him and strutted off with her nose in the air.

Now it sounded like the party had come back to Star Labs. Frowning, he turned the sound up, but after listening for a moment, he relaxed. Besides Caitlin, it was just Linda and Iris’s voices, so that was okay. The other women must have drifted off, and this was the after-party.

They also sounded drunk off their asses, which was even better. He hit record, anticipating blackmail material for days.

“Pass the champaaaaaaaaaaagne,” Caitlin yowled.

“You drank it, you lush!” Linda shrieked.

Iris squealed, “Get _more_ champagne!”

“Do they have, like, delivery champagne?”

“Not on a journalist’s salary,” Linda declared. As maid of honor, the party had been her deal.

“I have something,” Caitlin chirped, and Cisco made a “yikes” face. “Here, in my lab? It’s for Barry, cause he can’t get drunk on regular alcohol. It’s super-duper concentrated.”

“Ummmmm,” Linda said. “How fast will it kill us non-metahumans?”

“Your liver will try to crawl out of your body to safety,” Caitlin said, with a little too much relish. “Followed by your spleeeeeeeeeeeen.”

Cisco muffled a snicker. She had a really disgusting sense of humor when she was drunk. Body fluids and internal organs were just the start.

“Ewwwwwwwwwwww,” Iris and Linda chorused, apparently not up for gross-out anatomical humor.

“No fun,” Caitlin said, and Cisco pressed his hand harder over his mouth. “Oh, but there’s wine!”

“Why didn’t you lead with that?”

“Because I am _severely impaired_.”

“To the WINE!” Linda yelled like somebody about to conquer the West, and the cortex fell silent as they all rambled off, giggling. Cisco gave into his snickers. He was so glad the wedding was in two days. Iris might be over her hangover by then

He considered, then started flipping through the intercom feeds. He had no idea where Caitlin’s mythical wine was, but after a few guesses, he found the conversation again in one of the unused labs, which happened to have a very efficient refrigeration unit for biological matter. Clearly, it doubled nicely as a wine cellar.

“Truth or dare,” Iris sang out.

“Are we at a slumber party?”

“Yes, a drunken bachelorette slumber party with nummy, nummy wine, okay, so truth. Or. Dare, Caitlin Snow.”

“Okay, okay, truth.”

“Have you ever kissed Cisco?”

Cisco’s eyes widened at his own name.

“ … no,” Caitlin said.

“You hesitated.”

“It is the truth,” she said, with the haughty grammatical precision of Totally Snockered Caitlin. “I have not kissed him.”

“But you’ve thought about it,” Linda said.

Cisco leaned closer to the intercom.

“It’s … crossed my mind,” Caitlin said.

Iris squealed. “How much?”

“Once. Maybe twice… . A week.”

His mouth fell open.

Linda and Iris burst into bawdy laughter.

“I can’t help it!” Caitlin protested. “It’s not as if I get out much.”

He scowled. Wow. Thanks.

“And I’ve known him for years and I’ve seen his dates and they’re all very happy to come back, and he has nice lips.”

Cisco smirked, touching a finger to his bottom lip. Well. He wasn’t one to brag -

Whatever. He was _totally_ one to brag. His lips were great, and he was great with them. Damn straight his dates were happy to come back, at least a few times.

“And he has very nice hair, almost as good as mine, and his arms. Well. They're … ”

“Nice?” Linda suggested.

“Yes. Nice." She made one of those incredibly feminine noises of approval. "Nice arms.”

Iris chortled.

“So with all of that,” Linda said, “why have you not shoved him up against a wall and stuck your tongue down his throat?”

“He’s my best friend! It would be weird. Also, somewhat assault-y, the way you describe it.”

“Well, you would get his consent for tearing his clothes off, obviously.”

Cisco waved his hand like a magician. Consent granted.

“And friends with benefits is a thing,” Linda said.

“That would be some benefit,” Iris said. She and Linda both shrieked with laughter, and there was a crashy clink.

“Okay, but serious question now,” Linda said.

“What?” Caitlin asked.

“Do you think he’s a top or a bottom? Because I always figured him for a bottom.”

“Mmmm,” Iris said. “I think he would surprise you and be a top.”

Cisco started fumbling for the cutoff switch. Kissing talk was one thing - even a lusty discussion of his physical attributes was, well, reasonable to listen in on.

But a full-on sex style debate? Ohhhh, no. This was not something he could hear about himself.

“I actually think,” Caitlin said slowly, “that he’s a natural switch - like, you expect him to bottom, and he’s very good at that, but get him on top and he would blow your - ”

He finally found the intercom switch and slapped it off. Slumping back in his chair, he wiped his forehead.

So.

 _That_ was a conversation that had happened.

He didn’t know how he was going to look Caitlin in the eye tomorrow - or maybe ever - without thinking about dragging her into the janitor’s closet and letting her enjoy his lips and arms for herself.

(Although, point of order, his hair was actually better than hers. Not by much - it was a tight competition, honorable opponent and all - but these distinctions were important.)


	12. Here There Be Trojans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They are very useful for a number of applications and it's not weird, Cisco, stop making that face!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was writing a fairly silly smutfic (they don’t seem to come any other way for me right now) and started rambling about this as part of the story. It didn’t really fit, so I cut it out and came up with this kookiness so I could still use it.

“Holy latex Moses!”

Caitlin and Barry both jumped, giving each other baffled looks. It hadn’t been a terrified scream coming out of the med lab. More of an astonished one.

She called out, “Problem, Cisco?”

He came out of her lab brandishing a cardboard box with a logo more commonly found on a bar bathroom's vending machines. _“Why,”_ he said, “do you have like four of these in your supply cabinets?”

Barry angled his head to read the label, and his mouth fell open. “That’s all condoms? How many are in there?”

“What were you doing in my cabinets?” Caitlin growled.

“I was trying to find Q-tips and alcohol to clean - never mind. We’re getting off-topic here. Caitlin, this is a hundred-pack. A hundred!”

“They’re very useful,” she said.

“First off, I didn’t even know they came in this quantity. And second of all, what rock band are you dating that you need this many?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m not dating anybody, as you know perfectly well.”

Cisco gave Barry a suspicious look. “Is Iris okay?”

“ … Hey,” Barry said.

Caitlin had enough. She snatched the box out of his hand. “Listen up. These aren’t for sexual purposes. Among other things, I use them to isolate and protect field samples. They can hold solids, liquids, or gases. They’re waterproof, sterile, stretchy, and I can seal them very tightly just by tying a knot. They are versatile and excellent.”

“Wait, I thought you had like, little vials.”

She rolled her eyes. “Sure, Cisco. I’m going to wander around with a pocket full of hollow glass tubes, when we can’t go a week without some meta wreaking havoc and knocking one or more of us on our behinds.” She opened the box and waved a foil square at him. “These? Will never shatter and leave shards of glass in my hip.”

He nodded as if he could get behind that reasoning, but he couldn't just leave it there. Of course he couldn't. “Four hundred?” he said. “Seriously. Four hundred?”

“During particularly crazy months I can go through at least one of these boxes. Stop giving me that look, it’s not weird.” 

“It’s a little weird,” he grinned.

“It is not!” She marched back into her lab, taking the condoms with her and yelling over her shoulder, “I expect that to be the last I hear about it from you!”

Cisco considered her back, stiff with annoyance. “Okay, but those were dry,” he said quietly to Barry. “Do you think she also has lube in those cabinets somewhere?”

“I heard that!”

* * *

Iris sidled into the lab about an hour later. “Hey,” she said. “I heard what Cisco found in your cabinets. You talking to the boys yet?”

“No,” Caitlin said. “Barry asked if we could have a water balloon fight and Cisco just sent me a job listing for a Campus Health director. Ugh. They’re twelve.”

Iris gave her a sympathetic smile. “My dad knows a lot of ex-military guys on the SWAT team. They all keep a stash of condoms so if it’s pouring, they can keep the muzzle of their weapon dry.”

“Exactly! Exactly. There are so many uses. This isn’t strange. It’s a habit I picked up working for the military, actually. Nobody has more uses for a condom than a soldier.”

“Makes sense to me.” Iris toyed with a knob on her microscope. “So … how many, exactly, do you have?”

Caitlin looked at her friend and forgot all her annoyance. Iris was trying her hardest to look innocent, failing miserably. She was practically whistling. 

Caitlin shook her head, opened a drawer, and pulled out a foil packet. “One less,” she said, handing it over.

Iris blushed and giggled. “Thanks. I wouldn’t ask except I ran out and Barry ran out and I don’t feel right not even having one between now and when I can drop by a drugstore because - “

She held up her hand. “No need to explain. I see the way you look at each other. You can always raid this drawer if you need to. I keep it stocked.” She looked down into it ruefully. “These aren’t lubricated, ribbed, or spermicidal, but they’re protection. They’ll do in a pinch.”

“Right. Thanks,” Iris said, stashing the packet in the side pocket of her purse.

“Although - “

“Mmm?”

“If I ever find out you two used my nice sterile hospital bed over there to have sex, I’ll move the stash and never, ever tell you where it went.”

“Uh - what if we change the sheets for you?”

Caitlin crossed her arms. “Ever.”

“Understood.”

FINIS


	13. Wake-Up Call

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the tumblr prompt: “Who crawls through someone’s window at 4am to go for ice cream?!” High school AU

“Caitlin,” a voice crooned in her ear. “Caiiiiiiiiiiiitlin.”

She flapped a hand in the air. “G’way Mom, it’s summer.” She buried her face in the pillow again, sinking back down into sleep. She’d worked her tail off this year. She was very confident about her AP scores and felt she’d earned a really lazy few days, primarily concerned with making up her sleep deficit.

“Caiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin.”

She flapped again, and her hand hit something that yelped, “Ow!”

She rolled over, blinking, and switched on her reading light “Oh my god, Cisco?”

“Guilty,” her best friend said, holding his nose. He sat cross-legged at the end of her bed, dressed in an MIT hoodie that she’d gotten for him when his scholarship letter had come. “Ow.”

“What are you doing here? How did you even get in?”

“Window,” he said, as if walking two miles in the wee hours of the morning, climbing a tree, and popping open a second-story window was a perfectly reasonable thing for sane human people to do.

Oh, who was she kidding? It was Cisco. “Okay, but why are you here?”

“Ice cream run. You in?”

“Ice cream? Who crawls through someone’s window at 4am to go for ice cream?!”

“Someone whose A/C is broken and knows that the Stop’n’Go down the street from here recently put in a soft-serve, and the overnight guy is usually so high he doesn’t notice or care how much you’re putting in the dish.”

She pointed. “Get out.”

“C’mon,” he wheedled. “Chocolate, vanilla or swirl. _Swirl_ , Caitlin!”

“Get out, I said! I have to put on real clothes if I’m going to go with you for ice cream.”


	14. Scream My Name

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the tumblr prompt: “I bet I can make you scream my name” from wanderingxrivers

Cailtin shrieked, _“Cisco!”_

“Oh my god, stop!” Cisco wailed.

Caitlin, still clinging to his arm, gave him a snarky grin. “Isn’t this what you wanted? You said, and I quote, ‘I bet I can make you scream my name.’ Well, bet won, honey.”

“You know I didn’t mean in the haunted house. Every three seconds. I think I’m deaf on this side now!”

She smirked at him. 

“Okay,” he said. “Okay! It was a douchey thing to say, especially in front of the kids, although in my defense they’re like three, and they didn’t really get it. Will you stop screaming now?”

“Yes, I will.”

He kissed her cheek. “I love you. Crazy woman.”

A horribly painted ghoul leapt out of a doorway, roaring. She gave it an annoyed look. “Ugh. Go away.”

The ghoul looked disappointed.

“Sorry, dude,” Cisco said. “I know all your buds probably told you she was an easy mark, but she was doing it to mess with me. Trust me, she’s the scariest thing in here, and I like it that way.”

“Cisco,” she said as the ghoul slunk away. “How sweet.”

“You know me. I’m a pile of sugar. Also not wrong.”

She took his face in her hands and kissed him on the lips. “Tell you what. Later on, I’ll see if I can make _you_ scream _my_ name.”

“Mmmm. Promise?”


	15. Cancellation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: 'it's only one night we'll share a bed' from Tumblr

Caitlin walked into the cortex, on the phone. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Well, I understand, I suppose. Thank you for letting us know.” She ended the call. “That was the hotel in Coast City. They had some overbookings and had to cancel one of our rooms.” She let out an annoyed huff. “Something about a librarian convention.”

“No, really?” Cisco said.

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, it’s very annoying. You and I are in a single now. But it’s a king-size bed. Plenty of room.”

Cisco crossed his arms and shook his head. “Well. Okay, I guess. I mean, it’s only one night. We can share.”

“Exactly! We’re both adults. No big deal.”

“Not even. Hey, you don’t snore, do you?”

“No, I don’t snore! You’d better not kick.”

Barry and Wally watched them bicker happily. Barry leaned in to Wally’s ear. “How long before they just admit they’re sleeping together?”

“Man, I don’t know, but for God’s sake don’t _tell_ them we know. It’s kind of fun seeing what crazy-ass story they’re going to come up with next.”


	16. Forgiveable Sins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: “Before you decide to murder me, let me explain…” from bookworm-technogeek on Tumblr.

When Cisco walked into his lab, it was to find Caitlin standing over a shattered pile of machinery, with a guilty look on her face. “Before you decide to murder me, let me explain.”

“Explain?” he wailed, cradling the pieces of his favorite gadget in his arms like a broken bird. “Do you just _explain_ homicide where you come from?”

“I’m trying to tell you what happened! I came in here to leave a note, and I was texting with Iris, and I guess I wasn’t looking where I was going, and my elbow hit - “ She looked around. “A thing, and then that thing hit another thing, and it knocked your … thing off the table.”

He petted it, crooning.

“You know, if you kept your lab better organized and didn’t stack things on top of other things, this wouldn’t have happened.”

“Really, Caitlin? Is that really the direction you wanna go right now?”

“No,” she whispered. “Cisco, I really am so, so sorry. I tested all the others and they’re fine but that one’s just - it must have hit the floor just the right way and - I’m _sorry!_ ”

She held her breath, watching him pick up various bits and pieces. She knew how he could keep grudges. He nursed them, brewed them, aged them like fine whiskey. But she also knew how he valued his friends. She had to hope that years of friendship with her would outweigh the broken gadget.

Maybe.

He sat back with a sigh. “Okay. It’s okay.”

“Really?”

“I’ve been wanting to retool this design anyway. I was never completely happy with the control panel and every so often it overheats if you run it too long. But it worked okay overall, and I had so many other things to do, I just let it go.” He poked at the shattered glass of the readout. “I guess here’s my chance.”

“So you’re not mad at me?”

“Oh, I’m mad at you,” he said, and her heart sank. “But … buy me a milkshake and help me put this back together, and we’ll call it even, okay?”

She let out her breath. “Okay.”


	17. Adrenaline High

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the tumblr prompt: “Why the hell are you bleeding!?”

With a whoosh, the Flash and Killer Frost appeared in the cortex. Caitlin leapt out of Barry’s arms. “Oh my god!” she shrieked. “Did you see that? Cisco, did you see that?”

Cisco, who’d stayed behind to run backup, said, “I did, you were awesome, but - “

“I’ve never really understood why you get so hyped up, Barry, but now I do!”

“Caitlin,” Barry said.

“I’m _so high_ on adrenaline right now! Is he in the pipeline? I shouldn’t go down there and taunt him, should I? That would be unsportsmanlike, or something. But I kicked his ass!”

Cisco said, “Yes, you did, but - “

“In high heels! He made fun of my high heels. Showed him. Unh!” She punched the air.

“Yeah, he won’t make that mistake again. Honey - ”

“Oh, no, he won’t. Mess with Killer Frost and you get - frosted? Okay, you’ll need to help me with that, Cisco.”

He grabbed her shoulders. “I will, baby, I totally will. I’m so proud of you. But just answer one question for me first?”

“What’s that?”

“Why the hell are you bleeding!?”

She blinked a few times. Her ice-blue eyes were darkening to their usual color, and the reddish-brown was spilling down her white hair. But there was a sizeable patch of hair already dyed bright red. “Oh,” she said. “I imagine that’s the head wound.”

“The what?”

“Ooooh. The adrenaline’s starting to go now. That’s not fun. I think I need to sit dowwwwwww - “

Fortunately, Cisco caught her when she passed out.


	18. Clean-Up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the Tumblr prompts "star gazing" and "let's build a fort!"

Caitlin looked around the living room with remarkable calm, considering that every lampshade was down and there was a blanket hanging off the ceiling fan. “You were right,” she said blandly. “Stargazing was such a great idea. Let’s take two four-year-old speedsters to an open field at night. No way that could go wrong.”

Cisco balanced on the back of the couch, trying to reach the pillow stuck on top of the curtain rod. “Ha ha ha ha, don’t you start with me. We found them eventually.”

She pulled the blanket off the ceiling fan, shook it out, and started folding it. “We didn’t find them,  they came back here because they wanted more hot chocolate.”

“Well done, Aunt Caitlin.” He finally snagged the pillow, teetered slightly, and jumped to the floor rather than falling.

“And then you said, ‘let’s build a fort!’”

“Yeah, well, it kept them inside, right?” He tossed the pillow onto the couch. “That’s the important part.”

She stacked the blanket neatly on the coffee table and put her arms around his waist. “They had fun,” she said, kissing his nose. “We kept them in one piece. Barry and Iris had a lovely anniversary dinner and picked up two intact children fifteen minutes ago. That’s the important part.”

He hugged her back. “Even though the living room is in a shambles?”

“Nothing is actually broken.” She eyed him. “Right?”

“Right.”

“Okay.” She kissed him again.

She’d been weirdly chill the whole evening, even when the twins took off during stargazing, even when they pulled all the pillows and cushions off the couch and loveseat she’d taken endless trips to the furniture store to find, even when they spilled their drinks all over the blankets for the pillow fort. She’d just yelled out that they were going back home for hot chocolate, shrugged and agreed that pillows forts required sturdy cushions, and put the stained blankets in the laundry room. And she’d been giving him covert little smiles all day. Not that he minded his wife smiling at him, obviously, but it was odd.

He kissed her back. “But, man, I don’t know how Iris does it without speed.”

“She does have Barry. Plus, she’s their mom,” she said, her lips curving in that mysterious smile again. “Moms and dads carry a lot more authority than aunts and uncles.”

“Yeah, guess that does make a difference.”

“Do you want some more hot chocolate?”

“You even have to ask?”

“Anyway,” she added on her way out of the room, “at least we know there’s a very low genetic chance of our child being a speedster.”

“That’s true,” he said cheerfully, and started picking up the rest of the couch cushions. “Pretty damn unlikely.”

Halfway through reassembling the couch, he paused and said, “Hold the phone.” He dropped the cushions and hustled toward the kitchen. “Hey, Caitlin? Uh, something you wanna tell me? Caiiiitlin - ”


	19. Soup Run

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt “i thought you loved me. i guess i was wrong" from Rokesmith

When the front door opened, Cisco stirred in his nest of blankets. It was Caitlin - he could tell from her clicky heels and the jingle of her butterfly keyring. There was a rustle of grocery bags being set down. “Heyyy,” he said, pushing himself up a little. “Did you go to the store in Keystone City or what?” 

“Hey,” she said, coming over to the couch and perching on the edge. “How are you feeling?”

“Awful,” he said piteously.

”Well, you said you were at the brink of death when I left, so that’s a step up.” She ran her cool fingers over his forehead. “Your fever’s down. Did you sleep?”

“Yeah, some. Did you get my text?” he asked.

“Ah, yes, and I did get you soup, but I didn’t go to Anaya’s.”

“What? You didn’t?” He collapsed back on his pillow. “I thought you loved me. I guess I was wrong.”

She narrowed her eyes at him and stood up. “I’m ignoring that because you always turn into a giant baby when you get sick.”

“Do not,” he pouted as she went into the kitchen.

But seriously, he’d been craving some decent menudo the whole time she was gone. With the fat white corn kernels and the tripe cooked all day to the perfect texture and the exact right level of kick to the broth (well, Anaya’s was always a little heavy on the chili paste, but not everybody’s menudo could be his mama’s so he was willing to compromise) and now? Nothing. She’d probably gotten him freaking chicken with stars or something. He scowled.

The microwave dinged, and Caitlin came back in, carrying a big bowl of something that smelled like absolute heaven, and nothing like freaking chicken with stars.

He sat up again. “You said you didn’t get any soup!”

“I _said_ I didn’t go to Anaya’s,” she said, settling it on the side table. “When I got your text, I called your mother and it turned out she had some menudo left over from the weekend, so I went over there and picked it up.”

His jaw dropped. “You went all the way to my mama’s for soup?” Anaya’s was on the way to his place from Star Labs. His mama’s house was forty-five minutes in the other direction. Plus, the major challenge at the hole-in-the-wall taco shop was if the long-suffering staff could listen to Caitlin’s ear-clutchingly bad Spanish. (Look, he was _trying,_ okay.)

Caitlin and his mom - well, they weren’t exactly sworn enemies, but they weren’t making friendship bracelets for each other, either.

“She also sent all the toppings and things,” Caitlin said, opening up a parade of tiny tupperware bowls and lining them up on the coffee table. “Plus, she wants me to ask if it’s okay if she drops by tonight.”

He stirred the soup, wondering if his mom had sent the last of it just for him. “Uh. Yeah. That’d be good. I’ll text her.” He sprinkled layers of cilantro and chili flakes and just a little onion, then squished a lime half over top of it all. Just breathing in the steam cleared his stuffy head. “Mmmm,” he groaned at his first spoonful. “That’s perfect.”

Caitlin smiled at him. “Do I love you or not?”

He grabbed her hand and kissed it, so as not to get her sick, too. “You love me so much.”


	20. Far From You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the double prompt - “how about a kiss?” and “would it be alright if i borrowed your sweater? it smells like you..”

“So how’s the fort?” Cisco wanted to know, swiveling back and forth in his chair.

“Thoroughly held down,” Caitlin assured him, reaching out to adjust the webcam so her face wasn’t crooked on his screen. “Central City is so quiet, I’ve sent Wally out solo tonight.” She glanced off to the side, presumably to double-check one of her maps or gauges. Satisfied, she looked back. “How’s the Justice League?”

He looked around at the giant, glossy, metallic conference room. It made him feel tiny, kind of like when he looked out the window at the earth far below. Tiny and inconsequential, a feeling that was exacerbated when the room was full of heroes and the only one on his side ever seemed to be Barry. “About like usual.”

“His Swoopiness?”

“Oh my god. He so needs to get laid. Or if that’s not his bag, then like, a hit off the biggest joint known to man.”

Caitlin frowned. “Is that legal in his state?”

“Do you think someone with that much money needs to care? He’s got to relax, is my point, and lay off all the rest of us in the bargain.”

“Just because I can go six hours without checking in with my girlfriend,” said a deep voice. “Unlike you Central City heroes.”

Even Caitlin, several thousand miles away, jumped.

Cisco practically levitated. “GYAHHHH!!” He clutched his chest and glared up at the dark figure standing over him. “Excuse me. Private conversation? And also, excuse me for missing the love of my life when I’ve been away from her for three weeks and I don’t know how much longer it’ll be.”

Batman rolled his eyes and swooped away.

“Add a bell to the list of things that dude needs,” Cisco muttered.

He wasn’t dumb. He knew he and Barry came in for a higher level of suspicion than anybody else for the same reason that Caitlin was unofficially disinvited from participation in the Justice League. The dark patches of her Killer Frost past were a little too much for His Swoopiness or the Boy Scout to handle, and the fact that she was a welcome member of the Central City team in spite of her past meant their leverage with the League was just that smidge lower.

Caitlin said it was all right and their doubts were reasonable given what she’d done. She didn’t mind and they should go and help because when the League called, it was usually a matter of international (intersolar, interdimensional) security. But her eyes didn’t always hide her feelings when she watched them leave, and more than once, Cisco had almost cried from wanting her next to him in a tense or tricky situation.

But it was what it was, right? Barry thought they could one day talk the League into accepting her, and until then they should play nice. Cisco soothed his feelings by making fun of everybody, especially the guy he was pretty sure recorded all his webcam sessions to make sure he wasn’t leaking League secrets. (The fact that he would have totally leaked them like a sieve to Caitlin, if not for that surety, wasn’t the point.)

“Aside from him,” Caitlin said. “How’s it going, brokering a peace treaty with the aliens?” She didn’t even bat a lash over what she’d just said. Man, their life had gotten weird since the explosion.

“Okay, I think. We may be back home soon.” Please, please, please, he thought. It had been weeks since he kissed Caitlin’s real lips and not just blown a kiss through a webcam.

She smiled at him, eyes warm enough to heat his blood over the wifi connection. “Good.”

He peered at the screen. “Hey, what’s that you’re wearing? Is that my sweater?”

She went pink, and looked down at herself like it was all news to her. “I guess. Is it all right if I borrow it?”

“Sure,” he said. “But why? A/C up too high for Killer Frost?”

She squirmed and looked away, mumbling something.

“Hmmm? What was that? I didn’t catch it.”

“I said it smells like you. And I like it.”

“Awwww, baby, you have such a crush on me,” Cisco grinned.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “It’s very comfortable. You may not get it back when you return.”

“I’ll pay any price,” he said grandiosely.

“How about a kiss?”

“Just one?”

“Well, there is the matter of the five hundred percent daily compounding interest on that price,” she said.

He did the math and grinned. He would owe her a _lot_ of kisses even if he went home in a week. “Is it retroactive to when you first borrowed the sweater?”

“Naturally.”

“Mmm. I think that’s a price I can afford to pay.”

Far off in the other room, someone made a loud gagging sound.

Cisco raised his voice. “Hey, Swoopy! You gonna eavesdrop on a dude and his number one lady, you deserve all the nausea you get!” 


	21. The Snowy Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the tumblr prompt from fabledshadows: "Don't leave me! You're too warm!"

When Cisco pushed the covers aside, Caitlin stirred and whined. “Where are you going?”

“Told you,” he sighed. “Gotta get to the store.”

“Nnnnno. Don’t leave me, you’re too warm.” Her arm flailed out for him.

He tucked the covers around her and kissed her cheek. “Can’t. If I don’t turn up to Chuck E Cheese’s in three hours with the perfect gift for Anissa, my ass is grass. What do you think? Legos?”

She buried her face in the pillow. “Your cousin’s baby is turning two, Cisco.”

“Right, right, yeah, Duplos.” He danced across the floor, teeth chattering, to find his clothes. Jeez, it was cold. And dark. Like the sun hadn’t even risen today. He paused at the window and breathed, “Ho-leee - ”

“What?” said the lump of blankets in the bed.

“It’s like Hoth out there. Snow’s coming down so hard you can’t even see the parking lot.”

Her arm snaked out of the covers and snared her phone from the nightstand. “National Weather Service issued a severe winter storm warning,” she reported.

“Geez, ya think? Did you have something to do with this?”

“I’m not Weather Wizard,” she said. “I can only make it snow in a very localized area.”

His own phone buzzed, and he picked it up. “Oh my god. It’s a winter storm warning miracle. Mirella rescheduled the party for next Saturday.”

“Really? Your cousin doesn’t seem like the type to let a projected fifteen inches of snow stop her.”

“She’s not. But Anissa woke up with the sniffles and Mirella won’t take her out in this. Scoooooorrre.” He typed out a quick reply - _Sorry to hear, hope she feels better soon, muchos besos_ \- tossed his phone back on the dresser and dove back into bed, pulling the covers around himself.

Caitlin squealed. “Now you’re cold!”

He started kissing her neck. “So warm me up.”

As her arms came around him and her giggles turned into sighs, he reflected that today was seriously looking up, blizzard and all.

FINIS


	22. Do Not Operate Heavy Machinery

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: "you're my new pillow" from Tumblr

Caitlin glanced up and frowned at Cisco in the doorway. “Are you okay? Do you have another headache?” He looked off, somehow. Something about his eyes.

He thought that over. “Mmmm. No.” He ambled over and dropped onto the ledge between the work stations and the rest of the speed lab. He twisted his head to look up at her. “Heyyyy.”

“Hi,” she said slowly, sitting down next to him. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Mmmhm.” He gave her a sweet, slightly drunk smile.

Her eyes widened. “Did you take one of those new pain pills?” His headaches hadn’t cleared up since that intradimensional breach, and she’d prescribed him something stronger to handle them while she researched.

“Mmmmhm.”

“I told you to hold off taking it until you got home because they have the potential to make you extremely - ”

He folded up and slid down like all his bones had suddenly turned to custard, nestling his head on her leg.

“ - drowsy,” she finished.

“I'mma lie down now,” he mumbled, snuggling into her, curling his legs up on the ledge.

“Cisco,” she said.

“Mmm.”

“Cisco, don’t you want to go somewhere else? More comfortable? Maybe with a pillow?”

“You’re my new pillow.”

“You’re lying on cement. You’re going to be very sore when this wears off.”

He patted her knee. “Shhh. Pillows don’t talk.”

She rolled her eyes and rested one hand on his head. Without thinking about it, she rubbed a little circle into his temple, which felt knotted and hot.

He snuggled a little more, rubbing his cheek against her dress. “Best pillow ever.”

She shook her head. “ _So_ sore,” she muttered. “You’re going to complain to me and I’m just going to laugh at you. Watch me.”

Wally and Iris’s voices floated down the ramp. She felt her face heat as they walked into the speed lab and paused, brows identically high, at the sight of Cisco cuddled up half in her lap.

“He took a new pain med and it just, it hit him really hard and - ”

“Are you seriously trying to explain the two of you to us?” Iris giggled.

Caitlin squirmed and shrugged.

Wally asked, “You want some help getting him up to the medbay? He’ll be a little more comfortable on the bed up there.”

Her thumb smoothed over his hairline again. “Leave him for a few minutes,” she said. “Let him get really deeply asleep. Then we can move him without waking him up.”

“Okay, but he’s snoring.”

“Just a few minutes,” Caitlin repeated.


	23. I Know You’re Tired of Surviving (but you gotta keep on trying)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written for fouroct on Tumblr as part of my musical prompts series
> 
> Title from Nano's Hold On

They raced down the hall to the speed lab, Caitlin keeping up even though she was wearing her favorite high heels. “Crisis mode again,” Cisco said, hitting the lights.

“Wouldn’t be Tuesday night without it,” she joked feebly, heading straight for the second bank of monitors.

Cisco worked on automatic, hands flying over all the equipment, waking everything up, brain churning through theories and solutions and -

He realized that everything was on, ready to go, and all they needed was Barry down here so they could run their tests, find out what was wrong this time. Wally had been recruited to find him and bring him back.

He looked around. Caitlin stood, steadying herself on a monitor. Her eyes met his.

The next second, she was in his arms. He buried his face in her hair and pulled her so close that her necklace dug into his sternum. It was a pretty, jingling rope of gold chain and charms, and it pressed right through to the bone. He didn’t loosen his hold.

They stood, holding each other up, drawing strength from each other the way they always had, in the in-between moments. They’d both had their own share of personal crises over the years, of course, but so often it was something just like this, stolen time in the nooks and crannies of the latest Flash disaster.

“You ever feel like we’ve known Barry Allen for decades, not years?” he asked. A chunk of her hair got in his mouth. He spit it out.

She nodded, her chin bouncing against his shoulder. “If we both die of heart attacks from stress in about five years, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised.”

“Hey, you know, there are worse ways - ”

_“Don’t,”_ she said, voice cracking, ribs shuddering under his hands. “Don’t.”

He rubbed his palm over her shoulder blade, feeling her breathe against him. His mind was settling, less like a hamster scrambling on a wheel, more like a clock going tick-tick-tick. The worst times for him had always been when he didn’t have Caitlin to lean on, whether it was her crisis or not. He’d felt like he was vibrating to pieces, flailing in space without her there to anchor him. The moment she returned, every time, some inner gyroscope clicked back into place, keeping him steady.

_I freeze up without you_ , she’d told him once, long before that was a piece of dramatic irony so heavy it clanged. _I don’t know what to do, unless it’s a medical emergency, my mind goes blank -_

_I’m here,_ he’d said, hugging her close. _I’ll always be here._

Something beeped - the perimeter alarm. He looked over. “It’s Iris,” he said, and let go.

She held his shoulders for a moment longer. “Okay?” she asked, and he nodded.

“You?”

She nodded back, and they stepped apart, moving to do a last double-check of the equipment before Iris came down into the speed lab, her eyes wide and anxious, her breathing panicky-fast.

“It’s going to be okay,” Caitlin said, grabbing her hands. “It’s going to be all right.”

“We’ll fix it,” Cisco called from where he was calibrating a sensor. “Don’t we always?”

Iris managed a smile. “Yeah, yeah you do.” 

“Right! And when we don’t, there’s you. So we got this.”

Iris nodded, and breathed in and out to Caitlin’s quiet count - _in, two, three, out, two three four._

When she had control again, she let out a sigh. “I don’t know how you guys always stay so level-headed when things like this happen,” she said.

Caitlin lifted her eyes to Cisco’s, her mouth quirking up in a sad twist of a smile. He felt his own mouth curving to match it. 

“Practice,” she said.


	24. J'Adore Central City

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for "reunion cuddles" in my cuddle prompts series on Tumblr
> 
> Okay, so I was going to do something canon, which would mean (in the storyline I’ve spun out) that the first reunion cuddle would be months after she came back to Star Labs and it would be long overdue and a little sad and a little hopeful and -
> 
> And when I sat down to write, I realized I was angsted out for the moment.
> 
> Have this fluffbunny AU instead.

Caitlin stood in line at customs, her passport out, her customs form carefully filled in, her head full of cotton wool from jet lag. Her phone buzzed against her hip and she ignored it. Probably her mother, saying that her assistant would be picking Caitlin up. Or maybe, could Caitlin hail a taxi and make her own way home? After all, she was eighteen years old and had navigated Paris for an entire semester on her own. One little cab ride through Central City would be nothing.

She sighed and resolutely ignored it as it buzzed again. There would be time enough to look and be disappointed after she got through customs.

But even after after she got her passport stamped, she didn’t look at her phone, putting off the inevitable. She plodded through the crowds in a tired daze, telling herself that she would check after she got her bags from baggage claim.

“Hey!” a voice bellowed. “Caitlin Snow!”

It wasn’t her mother’s voice.

She whipped around. “Cisco?” she yelped.

Cisco Ramon, lifelong neighbor, lifelong best friend, stood grinning at her. “You walked right past m - _oof!_ ”

She’d dropped her carry-on and hurled herself into his arms. They wrapped tight around her, and he spun her in a circle.

She squealed with surprise and he set her down, laughing into her face. She clutched his shoulders, thinking _These are broader, and he’s as tall as me, and when did all that happen?_

But his smile was the same, bright and sunny.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Picking you up,” he said. His arms were still around her waist. “Didn’t you get my texts?”

“I was ignoring my phone,” she admitted.

“What? Why?”

“I thought maybe my mom was texting to tell me that she wasn’t coming, and I was putting off reading it.” She smiled brightly at him. “But you’re here, so that’s even better.”

“She came too,” he said softly.

“What?”

“She’s parking the car. We were running late because I insisted on getting you some good old American grease and salt.” He leaned down to pick up a bag that said Big Belly Burger. “She dropped me off so someone would be here to meet you, but she should be here really soon.”

“She came?” Caitlin asked blankly.

“To see her only daughter after four months? Yeah, she came.”

“Oh.”

“She did miss you,” Cisco said. “I missed you.”

She hugged him tight. “I missed you too.”

He held her back just as tight. She felt like she’d been starving for his hugs. As amazing as Paris had been, it wasn’t home.

When he let her go, she wanted to keep clinging on like a baby koala. But that might be weird.

“So what’d you bring me?” he asked.

“Greedy. Who says I brought you anything?”

“Uhhhh, I do, because every time my fam treks to Hermosillo, I bring you back presents. So cough up, Caitlin Snow.”

She laughed and rummaged in her carry-on - she hadn’t wanted to risk losing this to the vagaries of airline baggage handling. “There’s lots more, but to start - Here.” She plopped a soft felt beret on his head.

He adjusted it, grinning. “Damn. Look how fine I am.”

“Ooo la la,” she teased. “And - ” She handed him the biggest Toblerone she’d been able to find in the duty-free shop.

“Aw, you know what I like.” He ripped it open and broke off the first triangle, stuffing it whole into his mouth. He angled the rest of the bar toward her, offering.

She waved it off. “I bought one for me. That’s all yours.” She picked up the bag of fast food and grabbed a handful of still-hot French fries. “Mmmm,” she groaned, stuffing them all in her mouth. “They don’t have this in Paris.”

But Cisco’s attention had wandered over her shoulder. He nudged her, and she turned.

Her mom stood a few feet away, dressed in her usual pantsuit and perfect jewelry, watching them. Also as usual, it was nearly impossible to read her expression.

Caitlin swallowed her mouthful and almost choked. Cisco rubbed her back and whispered, “Go on.”

She stepped forward. “Hi, Mom.”

“Hi, Caitlin. How was your flight?”

“Long. But all right.” Catlin thought of the opal necklace and earrings that she’d agonized over, and spent a great deal of her spending money on, and worried again that the set would fall short of her mother’s exacting taste. She chewed her lip.

Her mother shuffled her feet, and Caitlin’s eyes widened at the awkward moment. Suddenly emboldened, she stepped forward and put her arms stiffly around her mother’s neck.

She was almost as surprised when she felt her mother’s arms settle around her.

“I’m glad you’re back, honey,” her mom said in a low voice.

Caitlin rested her cheek against her mom’s shoulder. “I’m glad to be home.” Through the unexpected glaze of tears, she could see Cisco smiling at her, with the silly beret tilted on his head and _I told you so_ all over his face.

She smiled back.


	25. You Think You Know a Person

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For my cuddle prompts series on Tumblr, Rokesmith prompted me with "cuddles after sex"

Cisco said, “You know what’s funny?”

“Mmmm,” Caitlin breathed as his fingers combed through her hair. She burrowed herself into his side, breathing in the delicious smell of his skin, his sweat, the two of them together. The unexpected roughness of his hairy legs, the warmth of his body. She nuzzled his neck and found the silky soft spot over his collarbones.

He was a mass of sensations she wanted to wrap around herself.

She remembered he’d asked her a question and said, “What’s that?”

He kissed her next to her left eye. “I’ve known you for the better part of a decade, and just tonight, I’ve learned several new things about you.”

She tilted her face up to his. And there was that, of course. That look on his face, for her. Brimming over with love and delight. 

She smiled at him, knowing she was giving him the same look in return. “Me too. You’re full of surprises, Cisco Ramon.”

He bumped her nose with his. “Back atcha.”

She stroked his shoulder, careful over the joint - he’d dislocated it last week in a fight, and she still wasn’t entirely sanguine about his range of motion. “Are you okay?”

“I told you, the shoulder’s fine.”

“I mean, um. I mean with this.” She gestured at their entwined bodies, under the blankets.

“I’m amazing, and isn’t that my line?”

“Why, because you’re the guy?” she teased. 

He laughed. “Because that’s what I do. I check up on you.”

“And I check up on you,” she retorted. “Amazing? Really.”

He nodded, suddenly solemn. “This works. We work.” He looked uncertain. “I mean, I feel like it went well?”

She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. “You couldn’t tell when I shrieked the roof down? Twice?”

He grinned, more than a little smugly. 

She kissed him again, softer. “We do work,” she said against his mouth. “And I’m really glad about that.”

They’d taken a risk, deciding to try romance after so many years of friendship. How awful would it have been if they’d discovered they were completely incompatible in bed?

That had most certainly _not_ been the case.

He nuzzled into her hair and they held each other a moment, not entirely lost in this new uncharted place they were in, not as long as they had each other.

“Okay,” he said. “Serious question now.”

“Mmm?”

“I have two slices of tres leches in my fridge. It was going to be a romantic dessert, but _somebody_ jumped my bones.” He waggled his eyebrows at her, conveying that the jumping had been entirely welcome. “So should we devour it before or after round two?”

Her eyes opened wide. “Oh,” she said. “Wow. That’s a conundrum.”


	26. Meltdown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For my cuddle prompts series on Tumblr. I was prompted for "when someone is crying"

_2025_

Killer Frost strode through the hallways, heels clicking, unzipped coat flapping. At the entrance to the cortex, she checked herself at the sight of the man bent over one of the computers.

Cisco looked over his shoulder. “Hey, babe. I thought you’d be out on patrol by now.”

“Getting started a little late,” Caitlin said, holding up the water bottle in one hand as she took a few steps into the room. “It’s been so dry lately that I thought I’d better hydrate before I went out.”

“Yeah, can’t make icicles out of nothing,” he said. He straightened up and gave her a quick kiss, avoiding her eyes.

“What about you?” she asked, now even more concerned. “I thought you were babysitting the twins?” 

Iris was covering some kind of charity ball downtown tonight and Joe was on overnights all this week. Caitlin had already made a note of the gala’s location. Things like that seemed to be like magnets for a certain kind of bad guy.

His voice was determinedly breezy. “Yeah, we had a pretty good time with _Lilo and Stitch_ and beanie-weenies. But Linda and Wally stopped by and they said they’d sub in if I wanted, so I thought I might as well come back here, run the comms if you needed it, maybe order up some grub, get some work done - ”

“Cisco,” she said, and his eyes met hers. There were lines of strain around them. “Not with me, okay?”

His face crumpled, and she set her water bottle down and pulled him into her arms.

“Shit,” he said into her neck, and “fuck. Shit. Hijo de puta.” He spewed a constant stream of profanity in two languages, soft and damp and helpless against her skin, while she held him tight, feeling her eyes prickle with tears.

When he’d calmed down, she wove her fingers through the end of his hair and said in his ear, “What happened?”

He sniffed hard, lifting his head enough to look at her. His eyes were red around the edges. “Dawnie asked me why I couldn’t vibe when her daddy was coming home.”

“Oh, honey,” she breathed, feeling her own eyes well up. “You know she didn’t mean it like - ”

“I know that.” His hands clenched against her back. “But she was just so sad, and DJ was looking at me, the way he does, you know - ”

Caitlin nodded. DJ didn’t talk anymore, not since Barry had disappeared, but it was amazing how much he could say with his big, dark eyes.

The problem with being raised around the impossible made flesh was that the twins believed that the adults in their life could make anything happen, eventually. Somehow. It made it worse when looking into their trusting little faces and having to say they were doing all they could and they still couldn’t find Barry.

She kissed his eyes, tasting salt. “What did you say?”

“I don’t know. Something stupid probably. God, they’re _five._ They’re five years old and they want their daddy. What could I even say to that?”

She rubbed her thumb over his cheekbone. “Barry will be back. It’s what he does.”

“This is the longest it’s ever been,” he said. “Even eight years ago, he wasn’t gone this long.”

“I know, but he’s got so much to come back to.”

“Yeah, but - ” He shook his head. “Why can’t I vibe on him? Why? He’s not in the speed force, so where the hell is he?”

"Hey," she said, and his eyes met hers again. “Don’t beat yourself up,” she said sternly. “I know you’re the most ridiculously powerful meta we know of, but even you’re not a god."

"Yeah, I know."

"Cut yourself some slack, you hear me?”

He sighed and wiped at her coat, where a patch of dampness shone on the leather. “You know, it’s funny. We spent so many years knowing about that clipping, knowing this was coming.”

She nodded. _Flash Vanishes in Crisis._ The author had changed, some of the details had changed, as time warped and flexed around Barry Allen, but that headline never had. 2024 had been a line in the sand for all of them, drawing ever closer.

Now they were past it, in uncharted territory.

Cisco seemed to be thinking along the same lines. “Why didn’t we ever think about what happened after?”

“We figured we’d handle it,” she said. “And we are.”

“Meltdowns from something a preschooler said notwithstanding?”

“I think we’re all due a few meltdowns.” She curled into him, and his arms tightened around her. He sighed deeply and they held each other for several seconds.

His hand smoothed over her hair. “You were headed out.”

“I can stay.”

“Skip patrol?”

“We’ll make Wally do it.”

“Wally’s on kid duty, remember? No, babe. Go on.” 

She pulled away to study him. “Are you sure?”

He gazed back steadily. “I’m sure. I had a bad moment there, and you got me through it, like always. Go out and protect the city. Check in on that charity gala a few times because you just know there’s some crook feeling heisty tonight. I’ll run the comms.”

She touched his cheek. “You know I’m never better than when your voice is in my ear.”

He smiled. His eyes were still red, but his shoulders had relaxed. She kissed him, picked up her water bottle, and kept drinking on her way down the elevator.

They were handling it. All of them. Even with the occasional, much-deserved meltdown, it was what they did.


	27. Denial is Not Just a River in Egypt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written for my cuddle prompts series on Tumblr, for the prompt "when someone's sick"

Caitlin Snow was one of his favorite people in the world. Sometimes, Cisco had to remind himself of that  - like when she wandered into his workroom and started putting things away that he had spread out for a reason, like he was probably going to eventually use it on his current project. Or when she got all ten-dollar doctor-words on him. (Seriously, was _trigeminal headache_ really that much better than _brain freeze_?) Or when she drove, which was just terrifying.

Or when she was sick.

She had two stages of being sick, and both of them drove him batty. Stage two was pretty bad - she was whiny and grumpy and miserable. Stage one, however, was worse, because it was straight-up denial.

“I’m not sick,” she insisted, blowing her nose for the fourth time.

“Seriously? Because I can see the germs in a miasma around you.” He fluttered his fingers around her hair. 

Very belatedly, she swatted at him. “It’s allergies. I have work to do.” She blinked muzzily at her computer screen. “Where did it go?”

“The screen went to sleep,” he said, and hit a button for her, popping all her numbers and graphs back up.

“Oh!” she said.

He shook his head. This was another part of why he hated it when she was sick, because she got so _vague._ Blurry around the edges where she was usually so sharp and defined, slow to think and react when she was usually so fast. It was Caitlin out of focus.

She started typing again, slowly, with much backspacing. “I want to get this done,” she insisted.

“Sure, yeah, I know. I’m going to make myself some tea,” he said casually. “You want some?”

She blinked a few times. “I guess,” she said. “If you’re making some.”

Oh yeah, she was as sick as a dog. She’d forgotten that he didn’t even drink tea.

When he came back with the tea (one mug), she was folded into the couch in the corner of her office, her spine slouched into the back, her shoes kicked off and her feet tucked up under her. She looked up at his step and met his eyes.

“I’m not sick,” she insisted. “I’m just - I’m taking a break.”

Sure. Because taking a break was totally a thing that she did on the regular. “Okay,” he said, flopping down next to her, holding the tea up so it didn’t splash. “Breaktime it is.” He offered it to her.

“’Eyyyyyyy,“ she said with deep suspicion. “Where’s yours?”

“I remembered I don’t even drink tea.”

“Oh. Oh, right.” She took the mug and cupped her hands around it. “Mmmm,” she mumbled. “That’s really nice. I’m cold all of a sudden.”

He put his arm around her shoulders, surreptitiously feeling her cheek. Yep. Burning hot. He wondered if he could sneakily take her temperature to prove to her that she had a fever.

She took a sip of hot tea and made a sort of whimpering sigh.

He’d put enough honey in it for an entire hive of bees. From that sound, and the way she winced as she swallowed, he’d guessed right on her sore throat.

“You wanna put your head down a minute?” he asked.

“I’m okay,” she mumbled without conviction.

“Yeah, sure, I know you are. But just a minute. Just lay your head right here.” He bumped his shoulder a little.

She let out another sigh, and her head sank down on his shoulder as if it weighed a thousand pounds - which he imagined it felt like right now. He smoothed his hand over her temples.

“I hate being sick,” she muttered fretfully.

"I know," he said. He rested his cheek on her hair, which was kitten soft against his face. “At least you admit it now.”

“Cisco,” she whined. “Cisco, my head hurts.”

Ah. Stage two.


	28. If You're Ready (like I'm ready)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, it’s not a prompt! But it is so fluffy your teeth will fall right out. HAVE FUN WITH THAT. The source of the title will become clear as you read because let it not be said I ever failed to ride a thematic horse right into the ground.
> 
> Also, I got inspired for this because of the tags on this post. http://pennflinn.tumblr.com/post/165213001293/kenzyshipseverything-nicckpetricca-this What I’m saying is blame @pennflinn basically.

Caitlin was not a morning person.

Of all people, Cisco Ramon knew this.

So why was he jumping up and down on her hotel bed singing Bruno Mars at six o'clock in the morning?

“Cisco,” she growled, grabbing the edge of the mattress before a particularly enthusiastic bounce could fling her right onto the floor. “Honey. I love you, but why are you jumping up and down on my hotel bed singing Bruno Mars at six o'clock in the morning?”

At the height of his bounce, he folded his legs mid-air and dropped onto the mattress. “You told me to,” he said breathlessly.

“I did not,” she said, faceplanting back into her pillow.

“Well, you told me to make sure you were awake early,” he said. “The rest I … extrapolated.”

She scowled. “Six in the morning?”

“Something about a salon appointment.” He leaned over, planting a kiss on her shoulder. “You wanted to look extra specially gorgeous today, if that’s even possible, and you know why?”

She began to smile into the pillow, because she was starting to wake up enough to realize why he was so excited. “Hmm. Remind me?”“

"Because it’s our _wedding day!”_ He leapt off the bed and did a shimmy around the room, singing, _hey baby, I think I wanna marry you._

Since he wasn’t jostling the mattress anymore, she rolled over and smiled at him.

He finished the verse and dropped down to rest his chin on the edge of the mattress. “Hi,” he said softly.

She cupped his face in her hand. “Hi back.”

“You excited?”

“Of course. I’m just still half-asleep, too.”

“Coffee’s almost ready.”

“When did you do that?”

“Uh, somewhere in the second verse, I think?”

She leaned over and kissed him, lightly because neither of them had brushed their teeth yet. “I’m _so_ excited,” she said. “This is going to be my life. You waking me up at an ungodly hour of the morning, jumping on the bed."

“Not every day,” he said, climbing over her to sit on the open space of the bed again. “I know how much you like sleeping in. Just special occasions. Christmas morning, the first day of vacation, opening day of a Star Wars movie, the kids’ first day of school - ”

“On the kids’ first day of school, you’ll cry so hard you’ll barely be able to take pictures,” she said.

“Probably,” he acknowledged, and crooned, _Just say yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah, and we’ll go go go go go . . .  
_

She reached up and grabbed his raggedy sleep shirt, tugging until he collapsed next to her on the bed, and kissed him deeper, unbrushed teeth be damned. Their arms wound around each other.

_My husband,_ she thought, giddy, tangling her fingers in his hair. _This man is going to be my husband. And I'll be his wife.  
_

“Hey, baby,” she whispered.

“Hmmmmm?” he said, nuzzling noses with her.

“I think I wanna marry you.”


	29. Loaner

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt “I need my shirt back. How about you take it off.”

Barry screeched to a halt and gaped at Caitlin. “What are you wearing?”

“Clothes,” she said, scowling at the meta database. “Cisco, did your goggles catch the video from the front? The angle from my suit is terrible.”

Cisco was hunched over his goggles. “Yeah, but the upload was corrupted. Gimme a sec to retrieve the raw file, okay?”

Barry was still focused on Caitlin’s clothes. “There’s no way that’s your shirt. It says Dab Cat.”

“Of course it’s not my shirt,” she sniffed. “I may have a hypermetabolism, but my clothing certainly doesn’t. I had to get the shirt I was wearing into a cold soak before the blood stains set.”

Cisco shuddered, setting his goggles down. A cable ran between them and his computer, uploading the footage again. “Can you please not remind me. Hypermetabolism or not, for some reason I have a really bad reaction to seeing a four-inch gash in your shoulder.”

She reached out to take his hand. “I’m fine,” she said soothingly. “You saw it heal.” She stretched her free arm over her head. “See? Full range of motion and everything.”

“Okay,” Barry persisted, “but where did you get that shirt?”

“From me, duh,” Cisco said, squeezing Caitlin’s hand before letting it go.

“You just have a shirt hanging around to give to Caitlin?”

"Uh, honey, all of us have a change of clothes here,” Iris said, walking in. “Come on, if you’re ready, we’ve got to get going. If the twins don’t get to bed soon, they’ll never go down.”

“Oh, right,” he said, scooping her up. In a blast of wind they were gone.

When it had died away, Cisco said, "You think he’s ever going to figure out we’re dating?”

“On his own?” Caitlin said, pulling up the raw footage from his goggles. “It’s not looking good. It’s been two months. We may have to bake him a cake.”

“Oooo, cake,” Cisco said, eyes lighting up. 

She laughed softly before re-focusing on the footage. 

“No, seriously, he got pretty close there for a minute. And then Iris distracted him.”

"Well, she’s got twenty bucks on next month,” she said, twiddling dials until the screen focused on the meta’s face. “You can’t blame her for protecting her bet.”

“Sure I can.”

"Honey, you’ve already lost the pool. What does it matter?”

“I honestly thought it wouldn’t take him more than a week, max.” He shrugged. “I mean, he’s got twins at home, I guess we can’t blame him for being a little spacey.”

She hummed. “That would be a reasonable excuse, except that the twins are three. And Iris also has twins at home. The same ones. And she figured it out within ten minutes.”

He let out his breath. “So, cake.”

“Looking that way.” She squinted at the screen and rubbed her eyes. “There’s something about this footage, but I can’t put my finger on it.”

“You look beat,” he said. “Let’s throw it in for the night, okay?”

“No, I wanna figure this ou-ou-ouuuuut,” she said around a jaw-cracking yawn.

He hopped up and grabbed her chair, wheeling her away from her computer as she squeaked in surprise and indignation, clutching the armrests. “I’m the doctor now,” he said. “I diagnose extreme tiredness and I’m prescribing no less than an hour of cuddling with your hot boyfriend, followed by a full night of sleep.”

She slumped a little, letting him cart her across the cortex. She was always wiped when she had to heal herself. “I mean,” she mumbled. “I am tired, I suppose.”

“Uh-huh, yeah, you think?” He put out his hand, opened up a breach to his apartment, and started to push her chair forward.

She jumped to her feet. “Leave it here! I just got it perfectly adjusted since the last time Harry blew through.”

He twirled around it like he was on a dance floor, grabbed her hand, and pulled her through the breach, zipping it closed behind him. “Ahhhh. Home sweet home.”

She staggered toward the couch and collapsed onto it.

“Cuddling,” he said, and collapsed next to her. She burrowed into his side, worming her arms around his waist, and they both let out deep sighs.

“I do feel better now,” she admitted after several minutes.

He kissed her ear. “Listen to your doctor.”

She returned the kiss, to his neck. “Does your prescription allow for making out?”

He hummed. “That seems doable.” He hooked a finger in the collar of the Dab Cat t-shirt. “And I need my shirt back.”

“Oh, do you?”

He leaned in, rubbing noses with her. “Yeah, how about you take it off?”


	30. All's Fair

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the Tumblr prompt "all the people I've murdered by letting you live" from brienne-of-the-sapphire-isle

Cisco narrowed his eyes. “Look at them, Caitlin,” he said. “I want you to take a good, long look.”

“Look at what?” she said, smirking.

He swept his hand out, indicating the carnage. “All the people I’ve murdered by letting you live.”

“They’re cannon fodder, Cisco,” she drawled, examining her nails. “Dying is what they do. Also, they’re plastic.”

Cisco looked mournfully at the wreckage of his army. “I feel their pain anyway.”

“Are we or are we not playing a board game predicated on world domination? All’s fair in love and war, sweetie.”

“Puppy eyes are nowhere in the rulebook!”

“Exactly! They’re not against the rules. And you didn’t have to give in.”

She’d sighed heavily and given him mournful looks every time he looked like he was about to attack her front lines, and he’d always found himself pivoting to attack Barry or Iris’s armies instead. Cisco slouched in his chair. “You know full well what your puppy eyes do to me,” he muttered.

She giggled.

Barry munched popcorn. “This is why I said we should play couples teams. But nooooooo, you kept arguing that it would be more fun if we all played our own army.”

He shook his head at his own decimated pieces, and Iris smirked across the table at him. His wife’s offensive maneuvers had been more along the lines of footsie and fiddling with the buttons on her shirt.

Cisco grumped, “Well, now I know better, thanks to Mata Hari over there.”

His girlfriend gave an offended gasp. “Mata Hari? Not that she wasn’t a fascinating historical figure, but she was primarily a spy, and I’ve been running an international offensive campaign on several fronts. I really think Elizabeth the First is a better comparison.”

Iris laughed. “What does that make me, Cleopatra?”

“Yeah!” Caitlin grinned widely. “Bring it, Cleo.”

“Happy to, Lizzy.”

Cisco sat up. Caitlin’s puppy eyes had no effect on Iris. Conversely, Caitlin could beautifully ignore any amount of button-fiddling. “Bare, can you - ”

_Whoosh_ and Barry was handing him another bowl of popcorn. “On it.”

They high-fived and sat back to watch the show.


	31. Comedian

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt "tell me a joke" from fabledshadow on Tumblr

“Tell me a joke,” Caitlin said.

They were in her med lab. He was sitting backwards on a chair, his arms folded over the back. She was doing something he couldn’t quite see, just behind him.

“Now?” he said. “You want a joke right now? Just, like, on command?”

“Yes, please.”

“Weirdo. Okay. Um. Uh. What did the red light say to the green light?”

“What?”

“Don’t look, I’m changing.”

She gave a little snort. “Okay, another one.”

“What? Wow. Fine. Um, how did the hipster burn his mouth?”

“How?”

“He ate his pizza before it was cool.”

“That’s not even funny. Tell me another one.”

“Oh my god, so demanding.” He wracked his brain. “Okay, why don’t they play poker in the jungle?”

“Why not?”

“Too many cheetahs.”

“Do cheetahs live in the jungle?”

“What? I don’t know.”

“Well, if they don’t, it doesn’t make sense.”

“Please just go with the joke. Such a critic.”

“Keep going,” she said, sounding vaguely distracted.

He dredged the depths of his brain for the worst ones he could find. He told bad puns, every really terrible bartender we-don’t-serve-their-kind-here joke that he could think of (”I hardly ever got to say that, even to the real scumbags,” she said wistfully) and a few really dirty ones that made her say _“Cisco,”_ like a maiden aunt.

“Okay,” she said, in the middle of a series of knock-knock jokes from the second grade. “We’re about done here. Just need to bandage it up.”

“Oh thank god,” he mumbled. “I was running out.”

“Did it help distract you?” Her hands, cool through her latex gloves, pressed soft gauze to his back and taped it down.

“From the fact that you were sewing my flesh back together? Yeah, sure did. How many stitches did you have to put in?” She’d numbed the shit out of his upper back, but he’d still been able to feel the pressure of the needle and the tug of the thread.

“Twenty-four,” she said.

He almost horked. “Sorry I asked.” 

“You did great,” she said. “Really.”

He glanced over at the shirt he’d been wearing when a meta had tried to stab him to death with steel fingernails of doom before he’d opened up a direct line to Iron Heights and tossed them in. He would have been okay if he’d been wearing his suit, but come on, he’d been standing in line at the DMV. Who expected a meta attack at the DMV? “I guess that shirt’s a loss, isn’t it?”

She picked it up with her bloody gloves. The parts that weren’t hanging in rags were stiff with dried blood. “Nothing’s going to save it now.” 

He sighed. 

She gave him a scrunchy face of regret, and bundled it together with a pile of blood-soaked bandages, stuffing them in the biohazard container before stripping off her bloody gloves and tossing them in after.

While she washed her hands at the sink, he tugged at the open-backed hospital shirt she’d given him. At least his pants had escaped the worst of it. He liked these pants. The shirt was sliding down his arms, though - she’d left the back open to get at his wounds. He went to tie the ties behind his neck and grunted in pain as the movement pulled at his stitches.

She looked up and slapped the water off. “Stop! You can’t use that arm for a few days. I’ll give you a sling.”

“My shirt, though,” he said.

She got it for him, her hands damp and smelling of the powerful soap she used after medical procedures. She patted the base of his neck. “You should get some rest.”

Weariness from the fight and the injury dragged at him like hundred-pound weights. But the anesthetic she’d injected him with was wearing off, leaving his back throbbing painfully in three burning-hot lines where the meta had swiped at him. “Don’t know if I can.”

She brought him painkillers, antibiotics, and a sedative, and he swallowed them down. Either they were damn good drugs or he was just that tired, because they’d barely hit his stomach before he felt his eyes drooping.

“Sorry they were all so bad,” he mumbled as she helped him to the bed and got him into a position that wouldn’t put any pressure on his injury.

“They weren’t that bad,” she said. “Blanket?”

“Please,” he said, and it settled warm over him. “They were awful,” he went on, his words mushing together under the effect of the sedative. “Those were my very worst jokes.”

Her fingers, cool and soothing, brushed his hair out of his eyes. The last thing he saw before sleep took him was the soft expression on her face. “You can tell me better ones when you wake up.”


	32. Justifiable Homicide

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt "Where's the best place to hide a dead body?" from swallow-the-whale on Tumblr.
> 
> I promise I’m not going to write a bunch of stories with Ralph because he’s gross, but I just remain so Annoyed by his general existence. Seriously, after what came out about Andrew Kreisberg, if that show doesn’t drop the character like a hot potato, I don’t even know what.

He knew by the click of her heels that Caitlin was seriously annoyed, so Cisco wasn’t surprised to see the scowl on her face as she stomped into his lab and flung herself into a chair. “Where’s the best place to hide a dead body?”

“Who are we killing?” he asked amiably.

“Ralph,” she snarled. “I’m so over him.”

“You and me both,” Cisco said, holding out his fist. “What was it this time?”

She bumped it obediently. “He asked me if Killer Frost was frigid.”

Cisco frowned. “I mean, technically - ”

“No, he didn’t mean frigid as in temperature, although that was the bad double entendre. He meant frigid as in the outdated and highly misogynistic term for female sexual dysfunction.”

Cisco blinked a few times. “Whoa. Just when I think he can’t get any more gross.”

“I know. So. Ideas?” She reached over to his computer and pulled up a map of the city. “I’m favoring the landfill.”

He closed the screen. “Nooooooo.”

She gave him an indignant look.

“Look, I don’t deny it’s appealing, but seriously, you can’t kill him.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s important to you not to literally be _Killer_ Frost, and frankly, I’m not letting one of my best friends go down into the dark for the likes of Ralph Dibney.”

“Oh, come on, does he even count?”

He gave her the hairy eyeball. “What would Hippocrates do, Dr. Snow?”

She scowled at him. “Ugh. I hate when you use my most deeply held ethics against me.”

“Yeah, I’m annoying like that.”

“So we just have to put up with him?”

They both grimaced.

“Maybe it’s time to do some training sessions,” Cisco said.

Caitlin frowned at him. “Barry’s in charge of that.”

“Barry’s a speedster. Plastic Man’s got to learn to think on his rubbery feet. He’s not only going to run into speedsters. He’s gotta learn how to react to all sorts of different metas.”

Her smile bloomed. “Like a breacher.”

“And a cold queen.  And you know what, this is for science. What _does_ silly putty do when it’s hit with a sonic boom?”

Her smile grew. “And how low _does_ the temperature have to get for it to freeze solid?”

“Now you’re talking. Plus,” he said more seriously. “You could use the practice finding the sweet spot between Caitlin and Frost, even when you’re incredibly aggravated.”

She sobered. “That’s true. I could.”

“All right.” He hopped up. “Let’s get suited up. It’s training time.”


	33. Chapter 33

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reaction to 4x11, and to the general lack of snuggles this season. Seriously, what gives?!

When they jumped into the cortex, Cisco had barely blinked the dazzle of the breach away from his eyes before a body slammed into his and a pair of arms wrapped around him. “Cisco!”

“Hey,” he said, hugging Caitlin back.

“You’re big,” she said into his neck, her voice muffled. “And not exploded.”

“Yeah,” he managed, “I’m pretty happy about that too.”

She burrowed her face into his hair and hugged him tighter.

Cisco never minded hugs, but Caitlin seemed to have become part boa constrictor. “Breathing,” he said after awhile. “Is a thing? Full-size lungs means I need full-size breaths.”

“Oh,” she said, and let him go. “I’m sorry. I’m just so happy to see you back to normal.”

“I know,” he said. “I’m happy to see you at eye level and not up your nose.”

She scrunched that same nose at him. “Gross.”

Ralph smarmed by. “No hug for me?” He opened his arms wide. “I’m full size Ralphie too!”

“No,” they said in unison, and Cisco dragged Caitlin away toward her workstation.

“So how’s the cure going? Just curious in case it ever comes up again.”

She looked over her shoulder, and he followed her gaze. On the monitor, two little Cisco and Ralph shaped silhouettes went boom.

“Um,” she said, and lunged to turn off the monitor.

“Urk,” he mumbled.

She mustered a smile. “It’s okay. You’re okay. Everything’s okay. I don’t have to - ” Her lips wobbled.

He tried to make her laugh. “Imminent death, pffffft. That’s, like, Tuesday night for us.”

“Don’t,” she said. “You were very close to - ”

“You’d’ve figured it out,” he said. “You’d’ve gotten us stabilized.”

“It wouldn’t have been in time,” she said. When he started to say something, she held up her hand. “No, it wouldn’t’ve. And I would’ve lived with that.”

He reached out to squeeze her upper arms. “Hey. Neither of us is on our own, remember? It’s not like it used to be at the beginning, just you and me and Barry.”

And Thawne, neither of them said. 

“We’ve got a great team around us now, and they handled it tonight. Good thing, right?”

“Right.”

He looked at her. “I need another hug,” he decided. “Help me out?”

She threw her arms around him again. He hugged her back and patted her hair, glad for both their sakes that he wasn’t exploded.


	34. Chapter 34

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a prompt from swallowthewhale on Tumblr: "What do you mean by leaving?"

Instead of calling out, “bye” like he expected, Caitlin yelled back, “What do you mean by _leaving_?”

“Um, departing the area?” Cisco said. “Going home? We do it pretty much every night.”

Caitlin came rushing out of her lab. “You can’t leave!”

“Watch me go,” he said, looking around for his phone. He’d had it earlier. He could swear he’d had it earlier.

“No, it’s too early!”

“It’s like five-thirty. And I’m not on patrol and I’m not on comms, and I have a grueling evening of Netflix and ice cream for dinner planned, so I’d like to get to it.” Ha! Phone found, there next to the computer. Right, he’d been playing Candy Crush earlier.

“No, you can’t,” she said. “There’s - there’s something wrong with my centrifuge.”

“Your centrifuge,” he said suspiciously.

“Yes,” she said. “My centrifuge. I need you to fix it.”

“How about tomorrow?”

“No,” she said. “Nope. I absolutely need it tonight.”

“Caitlin,” he said.

“It’ll take ten minutes. It’s Netflix. It waits for you.”

He considered calling bullshit, but Caitlin had the stubborn tilt to her chin that meant he was gonna stay ten extra minutes and fix her centrifuge whether he liked it or not, so really what he stood to lose was another ten minutes of arguing with her about it.

He trailed after her as she marched into her lab. “Okay, what’s wrong?”

“It won’t turn on,” she said, hovering over the machine for a moment before he gently nudged her aside to get at the suffering patient. “Cisco, I need it tonight.”

It was her night to be on comms, which could be really dull, so maybe she did have a night of hot DNA sequencing planned. He poked around. “Hmmm. Hunh. Oooo.”

“What?”

He shook his head, dropping into her extra chair. “This looks bad.”

_“What?”_

“Yeah, this machine might be toast.”

“But that’s impossible, all I did was - ” She shut her mouth.

“Unplug it?” he asked, holding up the loose cord with a smirk.

She let out her breath in a huff. “You scared me.”

He plugged it back in. “You deserved it. If you’re gonna lie, at least make sure it’s not so lame.”

“I had to figure something out fast,” she said sulkily.

“Why? I’m just going home a little early. What’s the big deal?”

She glanced over his head, and he started to turn, but she grabbed the chair. “No, don’t look! Put your hands over your eyes.”

“What?”

“Please?”

“You’re lucky you’re my favorite weirdo,” he said, covering his eyes as commanded.

“No peeking,” she said sternly.

“No peeking,” he said, rolling his eyes behind his hands where she couldn’t see.

“I know you’re rolling your eyes at me, but I’m choosing to let that go,” she said, turning his chair and pushing it so he rolled across the floor. When the floor tilted down, like they were going down the ramp, he thought about grabbing the armrests, but she would never let him fall.

“Okay,” she said, when the floor leveled out again. “You can look.”

He dropped his hands, and then his jaw dropped.

“Happy birthday!” everyone yelled.

“Oh my god,” he said, getting up from the chair and leaning over the cake on the table. It read “Happy birthday Cisco” and the candles blazed, heat billowing up into his face. There was nothing like a fire hazard to remind you that you were getting old.

Or a surprise birthday cake to remind you that you were loved. There were balloons and streamers and Barry was smirking, so this must have all gone up behind his back while Caitlin bullshat him about her “broken” centrifuge. “You guys, shit. You didn’t have to do this.”

“Of course we did,” Iris said, hugging him. “Thirty, Cisco, it’s big!”

“But it’s not even my birthday until tomorrow.”

“Which is why my cunning plan worked so well,” Caitlin said. “You never suspected.”

He rolled his eyes at her. “And we’re doing dinner and drinks and clubbing and everything on Friday.”

”Just in case something comes up,” Barry said. “Last thing we’d want is for you to miss being celebrated.”

He smiled at the cake. “That’s for sure.”

“Time for singing,” Caitlin said bossily.

He grinned at them while they sang, Caitlin off-key as usual. He blew out the candles and cut out pieces of cake to hand out. When he handed Caitlin hers, he slid his arm around her waist and hugged her sideways, so as not to crush the cake between them.

She hugged him back. “Better than Netflix?”

“I don’t know, it’s a new carton of Cherries Jubilee,” he said. “This was really sweet. Thanks.”

“Everybody helped,” she said.

Like he didn’t know whose idea it had been. He kissed her on the cheek. “You’re definitely my favorite weirdo.”

**Author's Note:**

> Want more? You can find me at mosylufanfic.tumblr.com.


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